L'esprit de l'escalier
by Tairona
Summary: As Superman, Clark Kent has faced everything from hurricanes to petty thieves, but nothing has prepared him for the experience of having to play peacemaker between the love of his life and her fiance.
1. Prologue: The Cherry on Top

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything in the Superman-verse ... I'm just temporarily messing with it. :)

**Warning: **_Superman Returns _spoilers!

**A/n: **So I was reading another fic in this section, and the author (I forget who :-P) said something like, "_Superman Returns_ has eaten my brain." Well, that's definitely happened to me, too. After seeing the movie twice and reading some of the mind-blowingly amazing stories here, so many SR plot bunnies invaded my head that I literally started writing three fics at once. So here's one of them! For the most part, this is completely based off of SR the movie, with some connections to SII. So it might not fit with the entire Superman canon, but if I get anything so wrong that you just can't stand it, feel free to let me know. And one more thing: whenever I upload documents, some spaces get taken out between words, so if there are spaces missing, I apologize, but I can't seem to fix it. :(

And now, without further ado ...

* * *

**L'esprit de l'escalier**

**Prologue: **The Cherry on Top

As Lois Lane read the notice taped to the doors of the central _Daily Planet_ elevator, she felt her temper rising like the mushroom cloud of an atom bomb.

_Due to the Metropolis Power Authority electricity shortage, the elevators are temporarily out of service. Thank you for your cooperation. _

"Great—thanks for _nothing_!" Lois exploded, yelling at the sign and scattering people in all directions, including Richard, who had to take a large step backwards to avoid being whacked by an angry sweep of her arm. "That's just _fan_tastic."

As if this day hadn't been bad enough already. She'd only been awake for three hours, and yet she'd already spilled coffee on her blouse, broken Jason's favorite toy car by accidentally stepping on it with one of her dangerously sharp heels, narrowly escaped a fender bender while dropping Jason off at day camp, and oh yeah!—she'd gotten into an argument with Richard about Superman. And now there was this elevator outage—the cherry on top of an already delicious cake.

Lois crossed her arms in front of her chest and began tapping one high heeled foot. What she wouldn't give for a cigarette right now. A whole damn pack of them.

"I'm going to call Perry," she announced, whipping her cell phone out of her purse. "Tell him we'll work from a library or from home... we can give him updates by phone, email—anything! But we are not trudging up to the office today."

Richard opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a friendly chirp coming from behind them.

"Good morning," Clark beamed as they turned to look at him, and gave both of them one of his goofy, trademark waves. He pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned forward to peer at the sign on the elevator doors. "Golly, looks like it's the stairs today then."

Lois gave him a look of utter disbelief.

"You are not seriously thinking of walking up those stairs," she said, pausing midway through dialing Perry's number.

"Lois," Richard broke in. "It's only—"

"Seventy-four flights!" Lois finished for him, then mentally hit herself on the head. That was the first time he'd spoken to her since their blow out this morning, and she just had to cut him off, didn't she? She gave him an apologetic look, but he was staring around the lobby now, his eyes wandering everywhere that she wasn't. Chewing on the inside of her lip, she finished dialing Perry's number, and raised the phone to her ear.

"Lane! Where are you? And where's that nephew of mine? We've got a meeting in five minutes," Perry barked, his voice so loud that Lois had to move the phone away from her ear.

"Perry, the elevators are out, there's no way—"

"What kind of lame excuse is that?" Perry demanded. Lois jerked the phone away from her ear again, and held it in front of her as though she had the man on speaker phone. "If I made it up here, then so can you. Five minutes, or it's your head on a silver platter with a parsley garnish and a side of potatoes."

"But Chief, that's _impossible_," Lois wailed. "Not even Superman could make it up those stairs in five minutes," and with that, Lois mentally smacked herself again for mentioning the Man of Steel in Richard's presence, "And besides, half the people that need to be in that meeting are stranded down here in the lobby right now."

Although as Lois said this, to her dismay, she noted that those people were dragging their way towards the stairwell door one by one, heads bowed with resignation, accepting their fate of having to trudge up seventy-four flights of stairs without even putting up a fight.

"Then it's their heads, too," Perry grunted. "Let that be a lesson to you all in the importance of coming to work early. Now—five minutes!"

"Can't we just do a-a conference call …" but Lois trailed off as she realized that Perry had already hung up. She glared at her phone. Well, so much for not going up to the office today.

"I, uh, well … shall we?" Clark gestured towards the stairwell door with his briefcase. "It-it'll be some … some nice, morning exercise."

He smiled, always the optimist, the let's-look-on-the-bright-side-hey-is-that-a-silver-lining-I-spy? kind of guy, but Lois just narrowed her eyes at him.

"Smallville, we're not in Kansas anymore," she reminded him. "I know it's hard to understand our sophisticated customs, but us city folk don't start our days with some 'nice morning exercise' of driving fence posts into the ground and bailing hay. We drink coffee. We smoke cigarettes. We grumble."

"Some people jog," Clark pointed out, a hint of amusement tugging at his lips. "Actually, lots of people jog. If you go to the park in the morning—"

"All right, you've made your point," Lois snapped, then pointed a finger at herself. "_This _person does not jog, though."

"Why don't we just start heading up?" Richard suggested, putting an end to this particular Lane-Kent quibble, not so much with his words, but with the exhaustion that seemed to weigh his voice down to the ground. "We're already going to be late. Let's not make it any worse."

For a moment, the three of them just stood there, exchanging a series of uncomfortable looks. Clark flicked his eyes between the two fiancés in a what's-going-on? kind of way, while Lois gazed at Richard with beseeching, please-can't-you-see-that-we-can-work-this-out? eyes, and Richard gave her this level, I'm-not-in-the-mood-for-this-now stare. Clark then dropped his gaze to the floor as he suddenly seemed to realize that he had unwittingly stumbled into the midst of a lovers' quarrel. He studied his shoes, scuffing them against the polished floor of the lobby. With a jolt of recognition, Lois realized that that was exactly what Jason had done this morning, when he had come downstairs for breakfast and had found his parents fighting in hushed voices.

Upon connecting Clark's behavior with her son's, Lois felt an unexpected twinge of affection towards the mild-mannered reporter. She had never been a fan of the way her partner acted like a whipped puppy dog. That wasn't to say that she didn't think he was a good friend; Lois Lane would be first in line (well, maybe second in line, behind Jimmy) to attest to how kind and thoughtful Clark Kent was. But would it really kill him to show that he had some balls hidden somewhere beneath that three-piece suit? Did he have to be so … so _meek _all of the time?

Well, that was Lois's usual line of thinking, at least. But now … oh, screw it, this was not the time to be rationalizing random spasms of affection towards Kent, nor would it ever be the time to feel random spasms of _anything _(except for say, annoyance) towards him. She had enough drama in her life as it was without throwing in new and inappropriate emotions to spice up the pot.

"Right! I believe we have some climbing to do, boys!" Lois suddenly blurted, her tone so cheerful in her attempt to compensate for the thoughts that no one knew she had been thinking in the first place that she sounded like a Clark Kent clone. "I'll race you to the top."


	2. Ch 1: She Could Make a Choice Now

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything in the Superman-verse ... I'm just temporarily messing with it. :)

* * *

**Chapter One: **She Could Make a Choice Now

After Lois nearly tripped for the second time in only five and a half flights of stairs, Clark apparently decided that it was time to say something.

"Lois, wouldn't you be m-more comfortable if you, um," the unassuming reporter paused to clear his throat. "Uh … if you, t-took off your … heels?"

Lois glanced back over her shoulder at him, but the second she met his eyes, he lowered his gaze and blushed crimson. She had to stifle a laugh. From the embarrassment on his face, you'd think he'd suggested that she remove her underwear.

"Kent, I was born in heels," she asserted, right before twisting her ankle.

"Dammit!" she cursed as Richard hooked an arm around her waist to prevent her from falling.

"Are you okay?" both men asked simultaneously.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she assured them as she straightened back up, standing on her right leg only, like a stork. "No need to call out the fire brigade."

Leaning on Richard for support, she experimentally placed her left foot back on the ground, but her ankle promptly gave way the minute she put weight on it.

"Okay, maybe not," she said, groaning, not from the pain, but from looking like such a wimpy idiot in front of Clark. Thankfully, his Heartland-of-America manners seemed to prevent him from poking fun at her plight.

"Why don't we, um, get you to where you can sit down?" Clark suggested, exchanging a glance with Richard.

Before she could protest, or even agree with a "Good idea, Kent," Richard had picked Lois up and was carrying her the rest of the way to the sixth floor landing, while Clark scurried up the stairs behind them. Their fellow co-workers who were also making the grueling pilgrimage to the upper levels of the _Daily Planet _building seemed to use this sight as an excuse to rest for a bit. Everyone in the stairwell stopped in their tracks, and stared unabashedly at the passing trio.

_Oh, this is great, _Lois thought, giving the rubberneckers a nothing-to-see-here-folks-geez-people-haven't-you-ever-been-injured-before? smile. _Richard could have at least asked me if I thought I could walk, _Lois continued to grumble internally. Not that she didn't enjoy being swept off her feet every once in a while, as her former yen for a certain superhero had proved. But the current circumstances were far from ideal for grand acts of chivalry.

Once they reached the landing, Clark jumped ahead of them and opened the door to the sixth floor so that Richard could carry Lois through. At this point, Lois was feeling so silly that she was ready to leap out of Richard's arms and crawl her way to a chair if she had to. _I'm not an invalid! _she wanted to scream. But that would have made her seem like an ungrateful schmuck. And in Richard's eyes, she must have already seemed like enough of a schmuck as it was.

They stepped out of the stairwell, and into a kind of hallway-slash-waiting area. Lois had never been here before, as the _Planet _didn't have any offices on the lower floors and simply rented the extra space out to various companies. From the lettering stenciled on the glass double doors at the end of the hallway, this floor seemed to be home to an architecture firm.

"Thanks," Lois managed to say as Richard set her down into one of the chairs lined up against the wall.

"I'll get something cold for your ankle," Clark announced, gesturing towards a soda vending machine at the other end of the hall.

Lois bit back a smile as he walked off, amazed by how together he seemed to be in the midst of this mini-crisis. Now that she thought about it, though, whenever Clark was helping someone, a glimmer of confidence _did_ usually peek through his bumbling exterior. Really, that man had missed his calling. He should have become a volunteer fire fighter or something. But then Lois remembered how cowardly Clark could be, and revised that opinion, deciding that he should be spending his time doling out soup to the homeless, or playing pinochle with lonely old fogeys in a retirement home.

"Does it hurt?" Richard asked, nodding towards her ankle, while down the hall, Clark fed quarters into the vending machine.

_No, it doesn't hurt, _Lois thought. _It just wants to take a vacation from being walked on, that's all. _But she held her tongue—she knew he was just trying to make conversation.

"It's not that bad," Lois replied, smiling weakly as she removed her shoes and began rubbing her ankle.

She held Richard's gaze for a moment longer, studying the sadness etched across his face until he looked away. Finding herself at a loss for words, she began to take in their surroundings, allowing her eyes to rove in an attempt to look as though she wasn't just straining to think of something to say—which she was. She had just decided to feign interest in a model skyscraper that was sitting in front of her beneath a glass display case, when Clark returned with a Sprite in hand.

"Here you go, Lois," Clark handed her the soda can and sat down on her other side.

"You know, Smallville, I'm really more of a Coke girl," Lois said, thankful to find that at least she wasn't tongue tied with Clark. "Sprite doesn't have enough caffeine in it for my taste."

"Sprite doesn't have any caffeine in it," Clark told her, frowning.

"Ex_act_ly."

"With all the coffee you drink, I don't think you need any more stimulants," Richard said. It was obviously supposed to be a tease, but the tone of his voice made it sound like a line from a funeral oration. Still, Lois was relieved to see that he was _trying_ to keep up appearances—after all, Clark didn't need to be embroiled in their relationship problems.

Lois pressed the soda can against her ankle, the moisture that beaded its metal sides dampening her palm and trickling down the side of her foot. Clark was making a swift return to his usual, geeky self, telling some story about how, as a teenager, he'd angered a colony of ground bees by tripping over his own feet while walking on a perfectly flat piece of ground and falling onto their nest. It was obviously supposed to make Lois feel better, but it was far from comforting to find her recent stumble compared with Clark's chronic klutziness. _I need to find a new partner before some of his _other_ traits start rubbing off on me_, she thought.

For a story about tripping, though, it was turning out to be ridiculously longwinded. Lois tried to pay attention as best she could, but she soon found her thoughts drifting, unbidden, back to the events of the last few days.

Really, though, this whole predicament hadn't started a few days ago, but a few months ago, on that fateful day aboard _The_ _Gertrude _when Jason—her little boy who was so fragile that he just _had _to be human—had, impossibly enough, thrown a grand piano across the room. Ever since then, Lois had been dying to know how she had become the mother of Superman's son, when she had no memory of being with the Man of Steel. _Seriously, what is this_? she had found herself wondering. _The second coming of the immaculate conception?_ She had waited patiently, letting days turn into weeks, thinking that he would explain it to her of his own volition. And when no confessions were forthcoming, she had let the weeks add up, biding her time until she found the perfect moment to confront him.

But there never are perfect moments to ask questions like, "How did you get me pregnant without me knowing it?" And so earlier this week, she had finally thrown caution to the wind, and called to him from a secluded stand of trees in her own yard. Jason had already been tucked into bed, and Richard was working late at the _Planet_, and perhaps it was this—being left completely alone with her thoughts—that had finally driven her to seek the answers to her questions. That, and the fact that the mystery had simply pushed her to her breaking point.

"I've wanted to tell you ever since I returned," he had confessed as they stood in the shadow of the trees. "I just didn't know how. I've already hurt you so much. I can't bear to cause you anymore pain."

"Just do it," Lois had ordered. "Hit me. I can take it. What I can't take is being stuck in the dark for one second more."

After he explained that he had erased her memory, though, Lois realized that, quite frankly, she couldn't take it.

"Lois, I'm so sorry," he had apologized, his voice nearly breaking with sorrow."I know what I did is unforgivable."

"Unforgivable?" she had scoffed in return. "_Cheating _is unforgivable. This? I don't even know what this is. I hate to say it now, but those moments were probably the happiest moments of my life. And you snatched them away, without even asking. Can't you see? You've altered the course of my life forever, and you didn't even give me a choice in the matter."

"If I had a chance to do things differently—"

"No, no, no, don't even say that," Lois had hissed, fighting to keep her voice down so that the neighbors didn't hear. "You can't undo what you've undone. You can't take back what you've taken away. Five years ago, you obviously found yourself wishing for a 'chance to do things differently.' And you did. You gave yourself a second chance, and I won't be giving you a third one."

And with that, Lois had severed the connection between them. She had been surprised by how easy it was, but then again, anger is an amazing catalyst. The light from the street lamps had sifted between the tree trunks, edging his face with gold and illuminating a world of pain and regret in his features, just as sunlight reveals the craters that scar the moon. But not even his tortured expression could change her mind. Of course, he would always be in her life—he was the father of her child, and Jason deserved to know him. But she was going to erase him from her heart, finishing the process that he had started five years ago.

"Lois, there's … there's one more thing you need to know," he had told her when they had reached the end of their conversation. But then he had stiffened, informing her that he needed to leave because Richard was almost back.

After he shot up through the trees and into the sky, Lois had had just enough time to get into the house before Richard pulled into the driveway.

"Waiting up for me?" her fiancé had asked when he had found that she was still awake.

He had kissed her then, and for the first time in months, she had allowed herself to revel in what she felt for him without doubting it or holding back. Ever since Superman's return, she had been torn between him and Richard. She had honestly loved them both equally, although in different ways, and the fact that they both had a place in Jason's life only made deciding between them that much harder. But now that she had learned of Superman's betrayal of her trust, the scales had been definitively tipped in Richard's favor. She could make a choice now, and she was choosing Richard White.

And so a day had passed, with her passion for Richard suddenly renewed. She couldn't deny that she was still furious—still aching—from what Superman had done. But she was determined to let go of the past by focusing on the wonderful present that she had. Yes, the Man of Steel had altered the course of her life forever, but maybe it was for the best—maybe destiny had always meant to push her into Richard's arms.

Now all she had to do was to find the right moment to tell Richard the truth about everything—about her previous relationship with the Guardian of Metropolis, about Jason's true paternity and the mess surrounding it. She had known that he wouldn't take it well, but she had been sure that they would be able to work through it, especially once he knew that her memory had been erased.

But again, there are no perfect moments to say things like, "Hey, you know your son, Jason? Yeah, actually, he's _not _your son, but I couldn't tell you before because my brains had been sucked out by an alien." Especially when someone else kick-starts the process for you.

"So, Lois, is there anything you want to talk about?" Richard had asked her this morning while making pancakes for Jason's breakfast.

The way he had said the question—it had been so casual, like he was asking her to pass the maple syrup, please—but there had been a sharpness to it that unnerved her.

"No, not really," she had replied, certain that he couldn't have known what was on her mind. Of course, she wanted to tell him—but the morning before a long day of work, only two days after she had discovered the entire truth for herself, with Jason in the house? It just wasn't the time.

"Really? Nothing?" he had pressed, his tone becoming increasingly dangerous, like a sword that is slowly being drawn out of its sheath. "You don't want to tell me about your midnight tryst with Superman? You just want to keep hoping that I won't find out?"

"H-how did you—"

"Jason told me," Richard had said, turning off the stove. "'Did you see Superman the other night, too, Daddy? Oh, no? Mommy saw him. Maybe he'll visit you next time.'"

"Richard, it's not what you think," Lois had insisted. "Please, let me explain. I was going to tell you, I just—"

"Jason says that Superman visits him, too, sometimes," Richard had continued, his voice starting to quaver. "That he flies into his bedroom, chats with him. Lois, why is _Superman _visiting _our _son?"

"Richard, I—"

But at that moment, they had both noticed Jason standing in the kitchen doorway, watching them with a confused look on his face. Oh, Jason. Her little Jason. How he had known that Superman had come to her the other night, she had no idea. As for him letting it slip that Superman had been visiting him, well, Lois had told him to keep it a secret, but she had never told him specifically to keep it a secret from Richard. How could she ask him to lie to his own father? He must have thought that it was safe to tell Richard. After all, if Mommy could know, then why couldn't Daddy?

"Lois, are you all right?" Clark's voice cut through her thoughts just as a tear spilled over the rim of her eye, and streamed down the side of her face.

_Beautiful timing, farm boy, _Lois thought, wiping at the tear in such a way that she hoped that it just looked like she was scratching her cheek. _Stop your boring story about falling down in a corn field just in time to see me cry._

"If-if your ankle hurts that badly, um, maybe Richard or I should find a doctor," Clark said.

His concern was touching, although Lois was really feeling like a pansy now that he thought she was getting teary eyed over a twisted ankle. She wanted to blurt out, _It's not my ankle; it's Superman and Richard and everything in between ...  
_

But of course, she couldn't say that. Not here, not now. Not to Clark, with Richard sitting at her side.

"The pain—it'll pass," she assured him, and forced herself to smile.

* * *

**A/n: **

_First thing: _Lois's line "You can't take back what you've taken away" is actually a quote from the (awesome) song "Damaged" by Plumb.

_Second thing: _I get the feeling that I unconsciously took Richard's line "Lois, why is _Superman _visiting _our _son?" from another fic on this site, although I can't figure out which one it would be (yep, I sound like Kaavya Viswanathan now ...). So if I did unintentionally rip off a piece of someone else's dialogue (and I hope that I didn't and am just being paranoid), then I apologize profusely and will change things as needed if you let me know. :)


	3. Ch 2: Springing a Leak

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything in the Superman-verse ... I'm just temporarily messing with it. :)

* * *

**Chapter Two:** Springing a Leak

_A, B, C, D, E, F, G …_

Back and forth, back and forth—Lois wiggled the metal tab on her can of Sprite, reciting the alphabet in her head, playing that modern variation on plucking petals from a daisy and sighing, "He loves me" or "He loves me not."

Oh, the suspense! Who would the soda can declare to be her one true love? Would the tab break off at "R" for Richard? "S" for Super? "W" for White? "M" for man? Or would it be another letter entirely, some unforeseen romantic monkey wrench just waiting for his chance to clog up the works even further?

(And would counting the letter "M" as being representative of Superman be cheating?)

… _X, Y, Z, A, B, C …_

Lois found herself at the beginning of the alphabet again. She could feel the tab loosening. Any second now, it would snap off.

… _G, H, I, J …_

Pop! The tab came free in Lois's fingers—it had broken off at the letter "J." _"J" as in Jason, _she thought. She held the tab up and nearly smiled at it, so pleased was she with the results of her foray into divination. Because what better results could she hope for? Jason was, after all, the most important man in her life now—a fact that she would do well to remember.

Bringing the little piece of aluminum up to her eye, Lois slowly turned to her right so that, if she squinted, the hole at the end of the tab framed Clark's head as he came into view. He was in the midst of enthusing about how nice—no, how "swell"—it was that city officials opened up fire hydrants to help people cool down in the oven-like temperatures that Metropolis had been suffering through all week. And he had become so engrossed by the delights of fire hydrants (talking to his knees without making any eye contact—something that always happened whenever he spoke on a subject at length) that he didn't even seem to notice something as strange as Lois peering at him through a soda can tab.

Lois tilted her head to get a better view of him through the hole in the tab. She felt that she knew how hard it must be for a fire hydrant—to hold back all that water—all that pressure—and to do it without springing a leak. That was exactly how she felt now as she conversed with Clark, keeping her emotions in check, sitting on her secrets in the way you might sit on an over-stuffed suitcase, nodding and smiling as though nothing was wrong. Or at least, she _had _been nodding and smiling, up until—

"Um, Lois? May I ask … what exactly are you doing?"

Lois blinked. She was surprised to find that Clark had turned to face her, with his eyebrows raised in perplexed amusement, but she kept looking at him through the metal tab anyway.

"Acting like a teenager," she muttered in response to his question, thinking back to her game with the alphabet.

"I-I'm confused," Clark chuckled, and then squinted at her as though he was zeroing in on her pores. It took Lois a moment to realize that _he _was trying to see _her _through the frame of the Sprite tab as well now.

Lois fought the urge to grin. _How many times have I done this with Jason? _she wondered. Because it was from Jason that she had picked up this ridiculous act of staring at people through soda tabs. Jason wasn't allowed to have soft drinks, but for some reason, he loved to play with the metal tabs whenever he found them, holding them up to one of his blue eyes and exclaiming "I see you!" before dissolving into laughter. Lois would then do the same thing to her son, and they would go back and forth until they were both in stitches. It was their own private game—one of many—and she was shocked to find herself inadvertently sharing it with Clark Kent, as if he was a close friend and not just … her co-worker …

_Well, we were close friends, weren't we? Before he went off on that trip to find himself? _she mused. _A lot of good _that _did him. Five years of traipsing through rainforests and bunking in hostels and he _still_ acts like he's fresh out of the corn fields …_

_I see you, Clark Kent, _she thought after another moment. But out loud, she said, "Actually, I'm acting like a four year old." She lowered the tab and rolled her eyes at herself, before explaining Jason's little game to Clark, who seemed genuinely charmed by the story. _He sure is good at expressing polite interest_, she observed to herself, and then dropped the metal tab into her Sprite. It landed in the half-full can with a splish.

"Lois, I, uh … are you sure that was a good idea?" Clark asked, frowning at the metal can in her hand. "You could choke on that thing, you know."

Lois shook her head at him in disbelief. "And today's public service announcement is brought to you by Eagle Scout Clark Kent—"

"Lois, I was never an Eagle Scout—"

"—concerning the dangers of foreign objects in beverages—"

"I was never even in the Boy Scouts—"

"Clark, stop worrying. You'll give yourself grey hairs," Lois shoved him playfully on the shoulder. "Besides, I always do this with my sodas. I'm not going to choke."

With that, she raised the can to her lips, ready to take a swig to prove her point.

"Just like you were much more comfortable with your heels _on?_" Clark gave her a meaningful look before glancing towards her swollen ankle.

"Oh," was about all Lois could manage to say. She lowered the can of Sprite, and before she knew it, she had burst out laughing. Clark was laughing, too, and blushing self-consciously like he always did whenever he gained some kind of victory. _No one ever taught that boy how to be _cool _about winning_, Lois thought, which only made her laugh harder.

It was a few minutes more before either of them had recovered from their laughing fit, after which an embarrassed silence settled between them, punctuated only by the occasional sigh or clearing of the throat. Lois wiped tears from her eyes, and wondered whether it was all of her pent-up anxiety that was driving her to the point of hysterics. She also found herself wishing that that moment of mirth could have lasted longer, because in that moment, she had completely forgotten about her troubles. Now that she was calming down, though—

"Gee, Lois, Richard … Richard's certainly t-taking quite a while, um, with that … with that phone call," Clark said as he adjusted his glasses. "I, uh … do you want me to go get him, so that you can leave?"

_Gee, Kent, you certainly know how to bring me crashing back to reality, _Lois sighed inwardly. About fifteen or twenty minutes ago, Richard had gotten an urgent phone call and had left to take it—which is to say, he had pulled his cell phone out of his pocket (his completely _silent _and _motionless _cell phone), and had studied it with an overdone look of concern before dashing back towards the stairwell with a mumbled "I've gotta take this."

Lois couldn't blame him. If she was in his shoes, thinking what he had to be thinking, she would find an excuse to get away from herself, too. And she knew that he wasn't really abandoning her—not wanting a repeat of this morning's breakfast confrontation, he had probably just gone off to collect himself, and would return when he was feeling more composed. That was just the way Richard was—if he could help it, he never liked to be around people when he was angry or upset, for fear that he would hurt them by speaking or acting rashly. No matter what the conflict was, he liked to face it with a level head. _Something that _I _should learn to do, _Lois thought ruefully, the other night with Superman flashing through her mind.

_What have I done? _Lois wondered suddenly, squeezing her eyes shut as if that could squeeze out all of the thoughts running through her head. _Better yet, what am I doing?_

"Uh … w-what are you doing, Lois?" Clark asked.

"Crap," Lois muttered, shaking her head at herself. "I said that out loud, didn't I?"

"Well …" Clark trailed off and began fidgeting with the cuffs of his jacket.

There were all sorts of things Lois was ready to tell her partner: "Never mind," "It was nothing," "Consider it a rhetorical question, Clark," "You don't have to keep me company anymore, Clark, Richard will be back soon." She was ready to wave away her little slip-up with a flip of her hand and a roll of the eyes. But nothing happened. Nothing came out. She just found herself staring at Clark, his broad fingers twisting at the buttons on his sleeves.

Yes, Lois did know how fire hydrants must feel—containing such turmoil while maintaining such a stoic exterior. It was the story of her life. As a girl, when the General had pushed her to her limits, she had never broken down, not even in front of Lucy. When Superman had left, she had never let anyone know how much it hurt her, and had only expressed her pain indirectly through that blasted editorial. And now, five years later, not only had she driven Superman away, but she felt like she might be losing Richard, too—she felt like she might be losing her family—she felt utterly_ lost_—and yet she still struggled to bottle it up inside. She might have asked herself how she had gotten to this point where, in a moment of crisis, she found that she had no one to turn to, but she already knew the answer to that question. She had friends, but reaching out to them meant reaching past her wall of self-sufficiency—something that even Lois Lane might not be capable of doing.

_Okay, Lane, time to jump off this train of thought, _Lois berated herself. _Who are you going to "reach out to" with a secret like this? And what do you expect to get—a hug? Yeah, you'll get a hug, and when you're through crying your eyes out on someone's shoulder, you'll turn around and find that Jason's been hurt or kidnapped or … worse … _

But she couldn't stop staring at Clark. Clark, who would've lain down in a mud puddle and let her stomp across him if he thought it would make her feel better. Clark, who had always been there for her, even when she brushed him off half of the time. Clark, who was probably the only person on the planet who had enough grace _not _to ask about what was going on between her and Richard, even after witnessing the tension between them. And before Clark had left to canvas the world, hadn't Superman confided in him nearly as much as he had confided in Lois (at least where the news was concerned)? If the Man of Steel trusted her partner, surely Lois could …

"Clark, normal people talk to their friends about their problems, right?" Lois blurted the words out before she could change her mind, propelling them through her teeth with such force that they emerged as a shout.

The way Clark jumped, you would've thought that she hadn't just shouted at him, but that she'd jolted him with an electric cattle prod, too. During the extended silence that had come before Lois's outburst, he had gone from playing with the buttons on his sleeves to fiddling with his glasses, moving them up and down as if they were smudged and he couldn't quite see through them anymore. He had lifted them halfway off of his nose as if he was about to remove them, but when Lois yelled in his ear, he clamped them back onto his face with both hands, and teetered in such a way that he probably would've fallen out of his chair had it not been for the arm rests on either side of him.

"Sorry, Clark," Lois smiled at him apologetically. "I'm not trying to make you go deaf, I swear."

"Th-that's okay. The hearing in my left ear is, uh … already a little fuzzy," Clark laughed nervously, still holding onto his glasses with both hands in a way that made Lois think of Jason clutching his security blanket. "But sure, Lois … of-of course people talk to their friends … about … problems …"

"Can I talk to _you_ about something then?" Lois asked. She reached out and took his hand, just as he was lowering it from his glasses.

"Lois, I honestly don't … I'm really not the best person to talk to about … anything," Clark mumbled, standing up and letting her hand slip from his. He wandered away from her, passing the display of the model skyscraper, and came to a stop in front of the polished, brass-plated elevator doors.

"Look, Clark, I realize that you're trying to respect my privacy, and I appreciate that," Lois said, trying to keep her mounting irritation out of her voice. "But what I would appreciate even more is for … Clark, you've always been a good friend, and I just don't know what to _do _with my life anymore. Please—there's no one else I can talk to about this. I'm asking you for help—and you _know_ I would never do that if I didn't need it. So don't make me feel like an idiot now for thinking I could count on you."

Clark flinched visibly at her words, a shudder passing through his broad shoulders, although Lois would have felt terrible no matter what his reaction had been.

"I'm sorry, Clark, I don't know what's gotten into me," Lois apologized.

"It's all right," Clark said, but he didn't turn to look at her, and simply returned to playing with his glasses.

"No, it's not all right," Lois insisted. "I shouldn't be taking out my frustrations on you."

Clark still didn't turn to face her, and he didn't say anything either. He was fidgeting with something, as usual—looking at his blurred reflection in the elevator doors, Lois could see that he had taken his glasses off, and was flipping them over again and again in his hands. After a long moment, he slid them back on, and finally turned around. He was a little paler than usual, but he gave her a sheepish smile nonetheless.

"What else am I good for, if not for that?" he asked, shrugging.

"Clark—" Lois began, scoffing at his self-deprecation.

"You can always count on me, Lois," he suddenly cut her off, in a tone so serious and deep that Lois felt both shaken and comforted—she felt like she would have believed anything he'd said at that moment. He gulped audibly before continuing, and his voice returned to its normal register, as if its previous drop had been nothing more than a trick of Lois's imagination. "Now, what did you want to, um … t-talk about?"

_What _did_ I want to talk about? _Lois wondered to herself. Now that they had come to it, she found that her throat had gone dry and that her mind had gone blank. The only thing she could think of was that sharing the burden of her current relationship issues with Clark might not be such a brilliant idea after all. Which was why she was probably more surprised than Clark by the next words that came out of her mouth, which were: "Clark—Jason isn't Richard's son."

* * *

**A/n:** Sorry for a long chapter without much happening in it, but I know that this scenario is pushing it, so I wanted to show a lot of Lois's thought processes to make it as realistic as possible that she would actually tell Clark _anything _about her "relationship issues." As for the soda tab thing ... that was just my brain being weird. :-P 

But anyway, before anyone starts freaking out over how much Lois is actually going to tell Clark about Superman (or about how much Clark is going to _let _her tell him ... or about how much she's _already _told him) ... all I can say is, just wait for the next chapter. As for what's going on in Clark's head during all of this, the next chapter will be from his point of view, so again, you'll find out then ... hehehe ...

And thanks so much to all of my reviewers so far! You guys (err, I should probably say girls ... _are _there any guys here? hehe ...) totally made my week!


	4. Ch 3: What We Pretend to Be

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything in the Superman-verse ... I'm just temporarily messing with it. :)

**-**

**-**

**-**

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**Chapter Three: **What We Pretend to Be

As Clark pulled his glasses off for the second time that day, he found himself wishing that he could trade his heat vision, or X-ray vision, or his spleen—or maybe all three—for the power of Super Decision Making.

Of course, as Superman, he made split-second choices all the time. Divert the lava floe away from the Indonesian village, or rescue the girl who's about to get her throat slashed in a back alley of Buenos Aires? Save your next door neighbor's chinchilla from falling out of the window, or stop the Wojtowicz kid from doing an olley into old, osteoporotic Mrs. Matteini (again) and breaking her shin (again)? Etc., etc. They were hard choices, but he never hesitated. Because in the superhero business, hesitation meant losing everything.

But for some reason, when it came to telling Lois Lane the truth about his identity, Clark didn't just hesitate—he became absolutely paralyzed. How many times had he tried to tell Lois about his double life since their talk (their falling out) the other night? Nine times—this attempt would make it ten. And how many times had he tried to tell her _before_ The Other Night? If it hadn't been for his eidetic memory, he would have certainly lost track by now.

Of course, the situation wasn't life or death—but quite frankly, if it had been, it would have been much easier to deal with. As it was, it was one of the hardest decisions that Clark had ever faced.

Over the years, he'd had so many reasons for telling Lois who he was, and just as many reasons for keeping that information from her. In the beginning, it had been a simple matter of protecting her; her connection to him through the Superman articles that she wrote for the _Planet _had put her in enough danger as it was, without her knowing about his dual identity, too. But after she had discovered the truth about him, and he had subsequently erased it from her memory—well, to say that that had been a mistake would be the understatement of the century.

That had been an act of protection, too. He had only wanted to protect Lois from the pain their relationship had caused her; but as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and _his _good intentions could not make up for the fact that he had abused his powers, and yes, interfered with Lois's life without her consent. Since his return from Krypton, not a day went by when he didn't wonder what might have been if only he had had enough faith that, one day, he and Lois could have learned to be together—that he could still serve humanity, even though one human stood above all others in his heart.

If only he hadn't taken the easy way out.

And now? Now it was clear that he had to tell Lois the truth about who he was. Keeping secrets from her and trying to distance himself from her would not protect her any longer, especially now that they shared a son—a son whom Lex Luthor knew about (as Lois had informed him some weeks ago). And even if he could have protected her with lies, he finally knew better than to try. She was the woman he loved, the mother of his child—if nothing else, she deserved to know the entire man whom she had created a life with, and not just fractions of him.

And yet, he still hesitated, and for completely less than noble reasons, too. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be"—a sentiment that Clark agreed with more and more with each passing day. After all these years of hiding behind a weak and cowardly façade, Clark could only conclude that he was starting to _become_ his façade. For how else could he explain how _scared_ he felt whenever he tried to reveal himself to Lois?

Glasses dangling from the tips of his fingers, Clark watched Lois now. After her unexpected confession that Jason wasn't Richard's son, she had dropped her soda, allowing it to clatter to the floor, and had buried her face in her hands with a mumbled, "I can't believe I just said that." He couldn't believe that she had said that, either, and could only imagine what must be happening inside of the indomitable Lois Lane to cause her to melt down like this. He knew that this sudden show of vulnerability couldn't be because of The Other Night, or at least not completely; yesterday, she had seemed perfectly happy, if not happier than anyone had seen her in weeks.

From the way she and Richard had been acting today, though, Clark certainly had some strong suspicions about what might have gone wrong. But in the end, it was only speculation. Even though he always kept an ear open in case Lois or Jason (or even Richard) got into trouble, he never eavesdropped on their day to day lives if he could help it. Even when they were all in the office together, he now made a concerted effort to block them out.

And so while Lois gathered herself back together as best she could, Clark twirled his glasses around by one of their side pieces, wondering about what had hurt her, and waiting for her to look up. He thought about getting her attention by speaking up, but every time he opened his mouth to say something, he heard her words in his head, heard her telling him, _Clark, you've always been a good friend. _And those words were enough to stop his voice in his throat.

Clark flipped his glasses over in his hands while Lois rubbed at her eyes, and he wondered what he would be to her once she opened those eyes and found out how good old Clark Kent had been deceiving her all this time. He wasn't her lover anymore—hadn't been for more than five years—and soon, he wouldn't even be a good friend, either. He would be nothing more than so much excess baggage—someone whom she would _tolerate_, for Jason's sake, and Jason's sake alone.

Clark flipped his glasses over again, fighting the urge to put them back on. Richard would have to be told, too, of course. _How am I even going to come in to the office anymore? _Clark asked himself. It was one thing to work alongside Lois and Richard when they just thought of him as a harmless co-worker. But once all of the cards were finally laid on the table, Clark felt that it would be preferable to try living on New Krypton than to keep up his act in front of their knowing eyes. _Maybe I could transfer to the Metropolis Times_, Clark thought. _Perry would probably kill me—no, scratch that, he _would _kill me, but— _

At that moment, he heard several sets of footsteps leave the stream of traffic that was flowing up and down the stairs. They were walking across the sixth floor landing. He shoved his glasses back on just as the door from the stairwell opened and a group of office workers filed through, heading for the architecture firm at the end of the hallway. Lois lifted her head and put on a tight smile, while Clark greeted the strangers with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Well," Lois laughed nervously once they were alone again. "Now that we've gotten that little … fun fact out in the open, I might as well cough up the whole story."

"Lois, I—" Clark lifted his hand, going for his glasses again. It wasn't the best time for this, it wasn't the best place, but if he didn't do it now, he suddenly felt that he never would.

"Yes, Clark?" Lois tilted her head, waiting for him to say more.

He let his hand drop. _We are what we pretend to be, indeed,_ he thought. He couldn't do it. Not yet anyway. Because to tell her the truth would be to lose her forever. That was why he was so afraid. He had already lost her as Superman, and to lose her as Clark Kent, too—he knew that it was inevitable, but he just wasn't ready for it yet. Like a patient who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, he needed time to come to terms with the reality of it. He needed a few more days to be in denial—to live in a fantasy world—to pretend that he wasn't going to have to face a life without her.

"I, uh … is-is Jason … is he _your _son?" Clark found himself asking, for lack of anything better to say.

As it turned out, it seemed to have been the right thing to say, because Lois began slipping back into her usual mode of behavior, rolling her eyes at him as if it was the stupidest thing he could have asked—and, in all fairness, it _was _the stupidest thing he could have asked.

"With all the trouble he gets himself into, the answer to that should be obvious," Lois remarked. "But in case it _isn't_—yes, Jason is my son. What did you think, Clark—that Richard and I found him in the middle of a field somewhere?"

"Stranger things have certainly happened," Clark said, suppressing a laugh.

"Sorry, Clark. I'm sure you don't know what to think anymore," Lois smiled at him, running a hand through her loose curls—such a simple gesture, and yet his breath caught in his throat at the sight of it.

"Um, well … I-I don't …" Clark dropped his gaze while he searched for some kind of response.

"I'll take that to mean 'yes,'" Lois said before he could come up with anything. "Look, why don't I just tell you everything from beginning to end, and _then_ you can let me know what you think, okay?"

"Wh-what I … what I th-think?" Clark stammered. Most of the time, the stuttering was part of the act—he had to focus to make sure that he tripped over every other word. Not this time, though.

"Yeah," Lois shrugged. "Give me some of your supposedly terrible advice."

"If-if you say so, Lois," Clark consented.

"Right … now then … where to start this sordid tale …" Lois trailed off and began nibbling on her thumb nail, a nervous habit that she seemed to have acquired during his absence (one of the smaller reminders of all the time they had lost). A crease deepened between her eyebrows as she frowned, and another silence fell between the two reporters.

Clark buttoned and unbuttoned the cuffs of his jacket, waiting for Lois to continue, and trying not to worry over what she was about to tell him. Even with the emotional stress she seemed to be under, he still couldn't believe that she was about to confess to him that, yes, the rumors were true—she had been Superman's girlfriend, and Jason was their son. If Lois Lane would divulge a secret like that—even if it was to the innocuous Clark Kent—then he didn't know her half as well as he thought he did. But if she wasn't going to talk to him about _that_, then what else—?

"Okay, sorry about that, I got a little … lost in thought," Lois finally said. "Right. So anyway, before I met Richard, I was seeing another man—obviously. His name was—is—um … Charlie … Bird …"

In spite of himself, Clark began laughing. Even worse, he tried to hold it in, so that it came out as a snort. Well, at least he had been right about Lois—she wouldn't have revealed the true nature of Jason's origins had someone pulled out all of her fingernails with pliers (not that he would ever let that happen, of course).

"What?" Lois was giving him an exasperated look, although he could tell she was biting her lip to keep from smiling.

"I-I'm sorry, Lois, but that … that name just makes me think of a Charlie horse," Clark told her, still chuckling, although he wasn't really poking fun at her, but at himself. _See what an absurd mess your lies have created, __Kent? _he was telling himself.

"Oh, shut up, Smallville," Lois grumbled. "I can't help it if the guy has a stupid name—_I _didn't give it to him."

"Sure, Lois. I'm-I'm backing off," Clark raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"All right, where was I?" Lois asked, glaring at him. "Okay, so I was seeing Charlie for a while, and I … we were … I really … um …" Lois drifted off for a moment, pressing her lips together. "I was so in love with him—"

Clark had to grit his teeth to keep from reacting to those words.

"—but then he just left, without letting me know where he was going or even telling me that he was leaving—"

"Oh, so this is-this is that guy?" Clark interjected. "The one who didn't say good-bye?"

"Yes! Exactly! This is him," Lois said. " See, Kent, you are a good listener. I'd almost forgotten that I'd told you about that."

Clark tried not to feel too pleased by Lois's compliment.

"So yeah, he—Charlie—just completely disappeared without saying good-bye," Lois continued—snapped, really. "And I met Richard shortly afterwards and … oh, god, now you must be thinking that Richard was just some rebound, replacement boyfriend, and to tell you the truth—and this is going to sound _terrible,_ but—he _was _at first. But then I found out that I was pregnant and—now this might sound strange, but I swear I had very good reasons to think this—I was _convinced_ that the baby was Richard's. And so I decided that I was going to make things work with him, for our child's sake. And then, I woke up one day and … I realized that, while I wasn't looking, I had fallen in love with him."

Clark couldn't help but flinch at that. _Well, this is what you get for having a conversation that you shouldn't even be a part of, _he reminded himself.

"He was just … he's been there for me when no one else has," Lois went on. "And as I'm sure you know, he's a great guy. A terrific father to Jason. I couldn't have asked for more. But …"

"But?" Clark prompted when Lois fell silent.

"But then Su … um … _Charlie_ … he came back," Lois stated.

"Did he, um … where did … did you find out where he'd gone?" Clark inquired, trying to think of things that a newcomer to the situation would ask.

"I did," Lois answered quicker than he had expected—apparently she had also become more comfortable with her role in this bizarre play. "He, um … well, you see, he's in the CIA, and it turned out he was given a deep cover assignment in China—"

Clark covered his mouth to hide a smile, and resisted the urge to ask Lois to explain how she had persuaded a CIA operative to reveal something as classified as the details of a deep cover assignment.

"—and you were right," she continued, her voice dropping so that it was nearly a whisper. "He didn't say good-bye because … because it was too hard. He told me … he told me that if he had said good-bye, he never would have been able to leave."

"So, uh, is … J-jason is …" Clark forced himself to speak, to detach, to stay in the mindset of the ignorant outsider.

"Yes, Jason is his," Lois nodded. "I just found out."

Clark shoved his hands into his pockets, and began nudging a dried piece of chewing gum on the floor with his foot. A thought had suddenly struck him. It had never occurred to him before, and he couldn't say why it had come to him now; perhaps it was because, for the first time, he was looking at his relationship with Lois as if it had happened, not to him, but to someone else entirely. Whatever reason he had for thinking it, though, he knew that he had no right to voice the question that had formed itself in his mind. But since he had already crossed the line … _Let's go all the way and trample it_, he decided.

"Lois?" he looked up and met her hazel eyes.

"Hmm?"

"Lois, why didn't you wait?"


	5. Ch 4: More Than You Bargained For

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything in the Superman-verse ... I'm just temporarily messing with it. :)

**Really long a/n: **Just wanted to say thanks to all of my reviewers again ... I don't know what I would do without your support. :) And thanks especially to Rosalie Kay for pointing out the issue about Clark lying. I was aware that Superman said he never lies, but that's always been a part of his character that has confused me. I had always interpeted that to mean that as Superman he never lies, but that as Clark he does lie in order to protect his identity. Although sometimes I wasn't even sure if that was completely true, since in the movies, Superman even has some moments that come close to lying (like when he asks Lois who Clark is).

Anyway, I still don't see how a guy who lives a double life can claim to never lie, but after thinking about it, I decided that I could at least make it so that, in this story, he doesn't tell any blatant lies (unless he absolutely has to to protect his identity). So I went back to Chapters One and Two, and I changed the two instances where Clark is definitely fibbing (in Chapter One, it's where he told Lois he sprained his wrist as a teenager, and in Chapter Two, it's the part that Rosalie Kay mentioned where he lies about being a bad listener, etc.). You don't have to go back and reread those parts, since I only changed one or two sentences, but I just thought I'd let everyone know that I have now taken that into account. And again, I always appreciate it when someone lets me know about my mistakes. :)

Okay, now for the actual chapter ...

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**Chapter Four: **More Than You Bargained For

Lois stared at Clark for a long moment. She had a feeling that her mouth was hanging open. After he had asked his question, her first instinct had been to pick up the soda can she had dropped, lob at his head, and to demand, _Why _should _I have waited? _But she restrained herself; he couldn't have been expected to know that his question would strike a nerve, and she wasn't sure that she could explain to him why it had.

_How could I ever explain not remembering an entire relationship? _Lois wondered. _Trauma-induced amnesia? Claim that I was drunk the entire time? Announce that, à la _Men in Black_, the CIA now has mind-erasing gizmos? _She nearly laughed at the thought, the tension within her slowly dissipating.

Clark, however, seemed to have caught a glimpse of the anger that had initially flashed through her eyes, and was now furiously back-pedaling, trying to soften the impact of what he had just said.

"N-not that I think … I'm not saying that you _should _have waited, especially not for-not for five years," he was saying, echoing Lois's own thoughts. "As you … I mean, as you said, he l-left you … and-and you haven't even told me what else he d-did, or didn't do, or did but sh-shouldn't have done and … I'm not making any sense, am I?"

"Clark—"

"Lois, I just meant … if someone I loved disappeared suddenly, my initial reaction wouldn't be … anger. I think-I think I would be worried that something had-had happened to them—"

"I never said that I wasn't worried," Lois protested. "And who said anything about being angry?"

Although, as she spat out that question, she realized that even though she hadn't explicitly _said_ that she was angry, a two year old could have figured out that she was. It was in her tone, the way she set her jaw, the way she was sitting now—on the edge of the chair, gripping the arm rests with both hands as though she was about to tear them off.

"I—never mind," Clark was shaking his head. "I-I shouldn't have asked. You had every reason to … no, I just … I shouldn't have asked. I don't even know what I was trying to say."

"No, tell me, Clark," Lois insisted, forcing herself to sit back and relax. "What _are _you trying to say? Don't worry about offending me. I won't bite your head off. Promise."

Clark gave her a wary look, as if she was the Big Bad Wolf inviting Little Red Riding Hood to come share a bed. And there was something else in his expression besides reluctance, but she couldn't quite make out what it was. Inexplicably, it made her think of a … jam … she had gotten into several years back. She had been working on a piece concerning the triad syndicates in Metropolis's Chinatown, and as her luck would have it, she had ended up being held hostage in the back room of a fish market, along with the owner of the store, a young married couple, and a handful of tourists. At one point, the young husband had decided to play hero, and had failed. As punishment, one of their captors had tried to force the man to shoot his own wife. The look on his face as the gun was placed in his hand … Clark's expression reminded her of that.

Of course, Superman had swept in seconds later and diffused the mafia-fish market situation. And at the moment, Clark was looking as though he'd like someone to sweep in and save _him_, but from what, Lois couldn't have begun to guess.

"You said you were in love with … Charlie," Clark finally said. "And yet, you moved on to Richard so fast that you thought that Jason was _his_ son. It just … I'm not … I'm not saying that you weren't justified in doing that, but it's kind of … strange. Like maybe … you didn't t-trust Charlie all that much? Or maybe … you weren't … really … in l-love with him?"

Clark was frowning now, as though he had just confused the hell out of himself. He shook his head again.

"I'm sorry, Lois. I-I don't know what I'm … saying. And this-this isn't even what you w-wanted to talk about," Clark laughed nervously, running a hand through his messy black hair. "So, um, what … what happened once you found out who-who Jason's father really was?"

"No, I trusted him," Lois said instead, ignoring her partner's attempt to change the direction of the conversation. "And I did love him—more than he'll ever know. But I was never really sure that he loved _me._"

"What?" Clark asked after an unusually long pause. He was giving her a look that was not so much deer-caught-in-the-headlights, but more deer-caught-in-the-headlights-of-a-tractor-trailer-carrying-flammable-cargo-and-going-ninety-miles-an-hour-on-a-cliff-side-hairpin-mountain-road. Something in his eyes and in the tone of his voice made Lois feel that he had gotten a little too immersed in her story about Superman … er, Charlie. _Well, he's probably the type who lives vicariously through others, _Lois decided, shrugging it off. _Or something like that. _

"Clark, have you ever …" Lois started up again, but stopped just as quickly. She had been about to ask Clark whether he had ever been infatuated with someone who was unattainable, but immediately thought better of it. Although she knew he would never say it if it was true (and maybe she was just being arrogant to even think this), she was afraid that _she _might have been his unattainable someone at one point. _And we don't want to go _there _… _

"Charlie and I weren't exactly a conventional couple," Lois finally said, getting straight to the point. "We didn't have a title or an official 'status.' We didn't spend time together the way normal people do—"

_At least, I don't remember it if we did. _

"He helped me a lot—"

_Saved my life a few dozen times. _

"Sometimes we'd go out—"

_Flying, that is. _

"But mostly, we were sort of … reciprocal contacts. He gave me exclusive—"

_Interviews. Leads on stories. And more interviews. _

"—information on certain, um, government issues. And I let him know about—"

_The underbelly of Metropolis. Where his help was needed. _

"—other stuff. Really, it was mostly a working relationship, and I don't think I would be able to tell you what else we were if I tried. Usually, we barely even touched, or kissed—"

_And I can only assume that we kissed, considering I can't even recall a peck on the cheek. That little moment on the rooftop aside, for all I know, Superman might not even be the kissing type. A guy who's used to doing things at super speed might skip foreplay altogether … _

"Half the time I was around him, I felt like a little girl with a crush, like the connection we had was just a product of my overactive imagination. I could barely believe that it was real. And when he disappeared—yes, I was worried. I was worried sick. I stretched my sources to their limits, trying to find out what had be-become of … h-him …"

Lois came to a halt and took a deep breath to steady her shaking voice. Glancing up at Clark, she found that he had averted his eyes in the way you might turn away from the sight of an open wound, and was now gazing down the hallway towards the vending machines.

She realized that this was the first time she had ever really talked to anyone about Superman's departure. Of course, she had _talked_ to people about his disappearance before—that had been inevitable, since for a few weeks, it had been the only thing on anyone's mind or tongue. She had never told anyone how it had affected her, though, or how she had dealt with it. And in finally opening up about it, five years after the fact, she was surprised to find that she was awakening all of the emotions that she had felt then; she might have buried them, but they had stayed as fresh as they were on the day when she'd realized he might never be coming back—and they were overwhelming her all over again.

"As for anger—I _wasn't_ angry at first," Lois continued once she felt that she could do so without breaking down. _Even with the rumors that he had gone in search of Krypton, I still didn't believe that he'd left without saying a word. _"Really, I wasn't angry until he came back, because it wasn't until then that I realized he had run off to begin with. But I did feel foolish, like I had been living in a dream world, and his disappearance was like a slap in the face, telling me to wake up. Honestly—and pardon the cliché—but if I had followed my heart, I might have waited forever. But you know me …"

"Nothing if not logical," Clark filled in the blank for her, smiling weakly.

"Yes," Lois nodded. "And in spite of what I _wanted _to do, I couldn't ignore my mind telling me that I'd never had anything with him in the first place. Whenever I'd start wishing he was around, this little voice in my head would ask me how I could delude myself into think that a man who—well, he was a really … popular guy, to say the least—and I couldn't stop wondering how I had managed to convince myself that he loved me above anyone else. _Before_ he left, I was so caught up in his presence—his aura—that I had never stopped to think about it. But once he was gone …

"Clark, I had already waited so long for something solid to come out of this … promise of a fantasy. I felt ridiculous. Listen to me! Even now, if I just talk about him I start sounding like an insecure high school freshman, pining after the captain of the football team. And that's _not me_. I felt so weak. Every part of my brain was telling me that I was an idiot, that he'd never cared for me, except as a friend. So to make up for that, I started working overtime to convince myself that I didn't need him—"

_Hence the editorial. That wasn't anger. Just me trying to win an argument with my less rational side. _

"And then when Richard came along … yes, part of me turned to him because he reminded me of Charlie, but most of me turned to him because I needed to … get my feet back on the ground. I needed to prove to myself that I was a mature adult who could be in a real relationship, and that I wasn't some flake who was going to waste her life chasing after a fictional romance."

Lois exhaled and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees and her chin resting in the cup of her hands. She wondered whether Clark had even heard the last bit of her rant—he was staring straight ahead at the wall in front of him in a way that would have given the most catatonic of schizophrenics a run for their money. His expression had gone way beyond deer-caught-in-the-headlights-of-_anything, _and could probably now be described as deer-that-has-gotten-run-over-and-turned-into-roadkill. After a long moment, though, he blinked, and broke the silence.

"Gosh … I never would have thought ... that ..." he murmured in the general direction of his shoes.

"That was a little more than you bargained for, huh?" Lois forced a laugh, and after missing a beat, Clark joined in, although his laugh sounded a touch more hysterical than fake.

"But to make a long story short, in the end, it was almost better that I didn't wait," Lois pressed on, speaking fast, just trying to wrap up what she had started now. "As you know already, it was his choice to leave, and on top of that, I just found out that he had … tried breaking up with me before he left—"

_If going all_ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ on me can be equated with "breaking up." _

"—I just hadn't known about it. So I don't regret it that I moved on so quickly," Lois concluded. "Maybe it wasn't the greatest choice at the time, but given everything I know now, there wasn't any other choice I could have made."

_And don't even get me started on how confused I would have been about my pregnancy had I actually waited, _Lois wanted to say, but she decided to leave that particular detail out.

* * *

**More a/n: **Yep, at this rate, I'm going to have more notes than actual chapter. 

But anyway, when I initially started to write this chapter, my intention was to make Lois see that she had made a mistake by not waiting. But then I realized that that only really applies to a world in which there's no memory wipe. In Superman Returns, Singer doesn't seem to take the memory wipe into account (at least, that's how I interpreted it), so _his _Lois definitely still has a lot of explaining to do. In this fic, though, since Lois didn't know that she'd had an actual relationship with Superman until Jason's trick with the piano, I realized that the real question wasn't "why didn't she wait," but more "why was she so pissed off when he disappeared" ... because that is kind of a strange reaction to have when the man you love vanishes. So that's why Clark shifted his angle of questioning a bit. :)

But yeah, there was no actual point to me saying that, except that I really wanted to rake Lois over the coals, and I just couldn't ... sigh ...


	6. Ch 5: To Lay It All on the Line

**A/n: **Sorry for the horribly long wait between updates! School plus no time management skills plus my sudden discovery of the actual Superman comics equals slow writing. :( I can't promise that my next update will come any faster, but I do promise that by no means am I abandoning this story. It will be finished, even if I have to do it all in a blitz of writing over winter break.

Also, as an aside, some of the names of places in Metropolis that I used here came from Wikipedia, so god knows if they're actually right, but for this fic at least, I went with the general sentiment that Wikipedia knows all.

* * *

**Chapter Five: **To Lay It All on the Line

As far as he knew, Clark Kent had never had an out of body experience.

His several brushes with death had led to nothing more than darkness and unsettling dreams. Maybe being able to fly in real life had negated the need to hover above his body when he'd nearly drowned in the Atlantic. Or maybe the afterlife wasn't real—the white light just random neural firing—and Kryptonian brain biology had prevented him from seeing tunnels after he'd plunged into Centennial Park.

And then there was the fact that astral projection just wasn't one of his powers.

Whatever the reason, though, even if he had never left his physical body behind, Clark was certain that, if he ever did, it would feel something like what he was experiencing right now.

For the last ten minutes, he had managed to listen and nod and make vague noises like "mm-hmm" as Lois had related the events of the past few days. She had told him a slightly skewed version of her revelatory argument with "Charlie," which he knew by heart. And then, she had explained her unfinished quarrel with Richard, which nearly fit with the assumptions Clark had already made about it, but not quite.

And he had managed to listen to her without ripping off his glasses, or saying, "Lois, I should have told you how much I loved—love—you." But he was only able to do it by letting go of the part of himself that wanted to reach out to her. Piece by piece, he let that part of himself float away until, in the end, he felt that nearly all of him was hovering around the ceiling panels and emergency water sprinklers, and that only a sliver of him was still speaking with the woman sitting before him.

"Why don't you just explain everything to Richard?" that sliver of him asked, while the rest of him watched from overhead with a kind of morbid curiosity.

"Oh, believe me, I've tried," Lois laughed mirthlessly. "But things just keep getting in the way. I couldn't talk to him while Jason was with us, of course. Then, after we dropped Jason off at day camp, he got a phone call about some political development in Venezuela, and by the time he was finished with that, we'd already arrived here. And I'd go find him now, but I can't even stand up because of my stupid ankle."

Lois allowed her head to drop into her hands. She massaged her temples, eyes closed, then raked her fingers through her hair and sat upright. When she opened her eyes again, something new was there.

"Clark, do you think I made the right decision?" she asked.

With a jolt, Clark fell back into himself.

"P-pardon me, Lois?" he stammered, hoping that the question he had just heard was nothing more than a hallucination.

"Was I right to choose Richard?" she asked, and this time there was no mistaking that the words were real.

"Do you think you … weren't r-right?" Clark queried. He wasn't sure whether he even wanted an answer, or whether he was just stalling at this point.

"When I made the decision, I was completely sure of myself," Lois told him. "But let's be honest—I was pretty damn pissed off. And I'm still pissed off. But I feel like I should have given myself more time to think about it."

_It's never too late to change your mind_, Clark wanted to say, but he choked back the words. "Wrong" didn't even begin to describe this situation. All of the alien powers in the world couldn't have given him an advantage over a human being that was as unfair as this one. If he abused his current position to convince Lois to pick him over Richard … well, one, it would never work out, because once Lois discovered the truth, never mind having a relationship with her—she would bury him alive in a coffin full of kryptonite. But more importantly, he would have abandoned everything that he had ever tried to stand for in life.

_That is, if I haven't done that already._

"Lois, with everything you just told me, I ... I think you already answered your question," Clark said, choosing his words with the same care that one would use to tip-toe through a field of landmines, fishing for some way, any way, to avoid having to give her his opinion on the matter.

Lois frowned, thoughtful. She then nodded. "You're right," she conceded. "I guess I did."

Inwardly, Clark breathed a sigh of relief that Lois didn't push the subject further. At the same time, though, his stomach tied itself in knots as he wondered what she had decided the answer to her question was. From what she had revealed over the past hour, he had a feeling that it would not be in his favor.

"Clark, could you do one more thing for me?" Lois suddenly asked, eyeing the stairwell door.

"Sure, Lois," Clark agreed. "What is it?"

"Could you try to find Richard, and tell him that I want to talk to him?" Lois requested.

Clark gulped. "Wouldn't it be easier for you to-to call him?"

"Do you honestly think he'd answer a phone call from me?" Lois scoffed.

"I-I guess not," Clark mumbled.

"You know I'm the last person he wants to speak to right now," Lois reminded him. "But I don't want to go through the rest of the day waiting to have an argument with him. I'm ready to get this over with. And besides, Clark," she smiled, her voice sweetening a touch. "You're so nice. I'm sure you could persuade him to come back and hear me out."

Clark raised his eyebrows. This was getting to be too much, but at the same time, he felt that he had no choice but to ride it out. Today's moment for telling Lois the truth had passed him by faster than a speeding bullet. When the next opportunity would come along, he had no idea. He did know, though, that revealing himself to Lois now would be akin to his newest alter ego, Charlie Bird, infiltrating Chinese intelligence only to intentionally blow his cover while in a room full of armed men. Bad idea, on too many levels to count.

Not that Clark had had any intention of "infiltrating" Lois's inner most thoughts, but—

"Please, Clark?" Lois added, her eyes beseeching.

"Um, you-you bet, Lois," Clark finally conceded. "Are you-you sure ... will you be all right, though, by yourself?"

"Don't worry. I'll live," Lois assured him.

"I know," Clark murmured. He then raised his eyes to the ceiling, and began scanning the floors above them for any sign of Lois's fiance. "Where-where do you think Richard might have gone?"

Lois shrugged. "Up to the office, probably."

But Clark had already checked the _Planet's _newsroom. There was no sign of the man there. He dropped his eyes, ready to X-ray the floors below them, but then decided that it would probably be better to conduct his search when he was no longer in Lois's presence. He already did enough strange things around her—no need to make her think that he had an unnatural fascination with office carpeting, on top of everything else.

"Oh, and Clark?" Lois stopped him as he headed towards the stairwell door.

"Yes?"

"Thank you," she said, smiling a smile that he had seen before as Superman, but never as Clark Kent.

-----

The stairwell was empty now, the morning rush to the office having ended over an hour ago, and no one was around to see the large, bespectacled man in a baggy suit gripping the banister with such force that the metal seemed to groan beneath his fingers.

If someone had seen Clark Kent at this moment, "mild-mannered" would have been the last adjective to come to mind. His jaw was set, and even the thick lenses of his glasses could not hide the red glow that was growing in his eyes. It took him every ounce of self-control that he had to keep from ripping the banister from the wall or incinerating the entire stairwell with one burning glare. He rarely lost his temper, even when dealing with the most heinous of criminals, but today seemed like it might turn out to be an exception.

It wasn't, though. After a few tense moments, and a few deep breaths that rattled the walls, Clark released the banister. He used his heat vision to smooth away the traces of his hand prints, and then started down the stairs, heading towards the parking garage where his X-ray vision had located Richard.

After his conversation with Lois, the grief that he had felt at the prospect of losing her forever had given way to complete blankness—an emotional vacuum that, in turn, had quickly filled with an explosive fury. He knew that it wasn't rational for him to be angry in this situation, but then again, the situation itself had left "rational" behind ages ago. He couldn't even comfort himself with Lois's confession about how much she had loved him, because that only served to emphasize the fact that he had taken something that was just _so good_, and had destroyed it beyond all repair.

It made him want to scream, to snap the peaks off of mountains, to hurl meteors into the polar ice caps until they cracked, to fly low through the streets of Metropolis, breaking the sound barrier, shaking the buildings and bursting their windows with sonic boom after sonic boom. It made him want to race back to Lois, to tell her all of the things that he had kept from her with both of his disguises, to make her see that, when everything else was stripped away, he was just a man who had made a mistake. A man who surely needed her more than the Earth would ever need a Superman.

Not until he reached the end of that train of thought did he realize that, in his daze, he had actually turned around and had started bounding back up the stairs, not at super speed, but fast enough as it was, taking them two at a time. He didn't know what had possessed him, but he did know that, suddenly, _finally_, he was ready to lay it all on the line.

Lois had asked him if he thought she was right to choose Richard. Well, he didn't have the answer to that. He couldn't make the choice for her. But how could she even make the choice for herself if she didn't know the entire truth? And not just the truth about his identity, but the truth about how much she meant to him.

Before he knew it, he was back on the sixth floor landing, his hands on the push-bar of the stairwell door. He could hear Lois's heart beating just on the other side of the wall, he could hear—

A scream. Dozens of them.

For the second time today, Clark found himself holding onto something so tightly that his fingerprints were pressed into its surface. Gritting his teeth, he let go of the metal push-bar, and propelled himself up through the stairwell, changing his clothes as he went. He couldn't ignore the situation that had suddenly thrust itself upon his attention. The things he wanted to say—needed to say—had waited too long already, but they would have to wait a little longer.

They would not, however, have to wait forever. The second this was taken care of, he would talk to Lois. Even if he had to do it in the middle of the _Planet _newsroom with the entire bullpen tape recording their conversation and a WGBS-TV camera trained on them, he would tell her the truth.

Energized by this thought, Clark shot through the door to the _Planet_'s roof, accelerating up to Mach ten as he arced through the sky, tracing the course of a perfect parabola whose end lay in Glenmorgan Square—the heart of midtown Metropolis. From the sound of things, a wave of terror was spreading through the place, radiating outwards like shocks from an earthquake. Clark could hear hundreds of feet pounding the earth in a massive stampede, flesh smacking flesh as people fought over taxis and shoved their way down into the Metro stations, police whistles shrilling in a futile attempt to keep order. And above it all, one cry, passing from mouth to mouth, almost chanted, like some perverted mantra:

There's a bomb.

Glenmorgan Square was only a couple dozen blocks away from the _Planet_, a distance that Clark could cover in a second at his current speed. Even as he streaked forward, though, he was already scanning the area ahead, zooming in on it with his telescopic vision, then re-focusing his eyes even further so that he was observing the Square in all wavelengths from infrared up through X-ray. By the time he began his descent, he had already located the bomb and had gotten a good enough look at its insides to know that, if this thing went off, Metropolis was going to be dealing with something much worse than a crater in the middle of a tourist trap.

The device was sitting on a traffic island in the middle of Bessolo Boulevard—a large metal canister, practically wrapped in C4, with a timer that, in large red digits, showed that there were only twenty seconds left before detonation. The C4 and the short fuse weren't the problem, though. The problem lay inside the metal canister, in the form of an oily liquid which Clark's microscopic vision revealed to be none other than VX—one of the deadliest nerve agents in existence.

Clark dove towards the earth, decelerating rapidly at the last possible millisecond so as to avoid making his own crater in the middle of the Square. The authorities had managed to clear people out of the area directly surrounding the bomb, but the place was still seething with bewildered crowds—they would never be evacuated in time. Clark knew he could handle this, though. All he had to do was grab the bomb, fly it into outer space where it could explode safely—

But he had barely begun to reach for the bomb when he noticed that it contained several motion detectors. From the way they were placed, it seemed that they were geared to detonate the device if the explosives were separated from the VX canister, if the entire thing was moved, or if it was even touched. And if the motion detectors weren't bad enough, the bomb also had temperature sensors. _So much for trying to disarm it with heat vision_, Clark thought, although he hadn't even gotten far enough along in his mental calculations to figure out how that would have worked.

Somehow, though, part of Clark found a moment to feel immensely relieved that no one else in the Square had come into physical contact with the bomb, accidentally or otherwise. At the same time, another part of him realized that the panicked crowds had started to take notice of his presence, that the pounding feet were coming to a standstill, that people were halting in their flight to watch him. It was the exact opposite of what they should have been doing, but Clark didn't have time to tell them to keep going, to get away—not that they would be able to get away in—

Fifteen seconds left.

Clark briefly considered using his breath to blow the people out of Glenmorgan Square, but he knew that was no good—it would only hurt them. He had to focus on the bomb. Stopping it was the only viable option.

But how could he do that? His mind raced through possible courses of action. The more he thought about it, the clearer it became that there was no way he could defuse the bomb, no way he could prevent it from detonating here, on the ground. What he had to do, then, was to contain it once it went off. He could use his body as a shield against the blast, but that didn't solve the problem of the VX, which would be vaporized by the heat of the exploding C4, and dispersed as a gas. He would have to inhale the deadly vapor, fly into space, and release it there.

Five seconds left.

Clark scanned the bomb one last time. He already had his plan, but he was hoping that there was something he had missed, something that could aid him. And that was when he realized that he _had _missed something, but it wasn't going to be helpful in the least.

Four seconds to go, and the base of the metal canister was made out of lead. Lead. He had noticed it earlier, and it should have screamed to him that maybe, just maybe, this disaster wasn't only designed to hurt the citizens of Metropolis, but him as well. In his rush to figure out a way to save the city from the bomb, though, his mind had jumped right over the issue of the lead base, brushing it off as coincidence, never pausing to think that he couldn't stop the bomb if the bomb stopped him first.

Three seconds, and he couldn't believe that, after everything that he had been through, he still wasn't wary enough. That he could be so protective of others' lives, but so careless with his own.

Although it could be nothing. A bluff. A scare tactic. After all, the government _had_ made a special effort to clean up all of the kryptonite left over from Luthor's continent...

Two seconds, and Clark shook the thoughts from his head. He knew that it wouldn't do any good to worry about the lead compartment, or his own fate in this situation. Regardless of what might be hiding in that lead base, he had a duty to perform. He couldn't abandon Metropolis to save himself from a threat that wasn't even fully substantiated, but only suspected.

He couldn't abandon Metropolis again period.

One second. While he waited for the coming explosion, Clark looked up from the bomb that he was kneeling in front of. To him, the whole Square appeared to be in a kind of suspended animation. People frozen in mid-gesture, wind-blown pieces of litter hovering above the ground, a flock of pigeons crawling through the air instead of swooping, as though they were flying through gelatin. One of the police officers on the scene who had come running up to Clark was just finishing off the tail end of the question, "What do we do, Superman?", and the last syllable to emerge from the man's mouth seemed to stretch on for hours, before an urgent beeping cut him off.

Zero.

In the brief pause before the bomb detonated—a pause that was brief even by Clark's standards, as electrons whizzed through wires at nearly the speed of light—he found himself wondering, for god knows what reason, whether Lois would be upset with him for going back on his promise to talk to Richard for her. He didn't get the chance to come to any conclusions, though.

Time was up.


	7. Ch 6: The One That Hits You

**Long frickin' a/n: **First of all, in the last chapter, I changed the part that says the Justice League cleaned up the kryptonite from New Krypton to just saying that the government cleaned it up. This is mainly because I realized that, realistically, the rest of this story would probably not take place if the Justice League were in existence.

Second of all, against my better judgment, my Superman Muse has forced me into writing another chapter in record time (as you can see) ... so much for me saying I wouldn't be able to update. XD For the sake of my writing (and you guys!), I can only hope she does it again, although for the sake of my schoolwork, I hope she goes into hibernation for a while ... lol.

Thirdly, I have to warn you, we have reached the part of the story where, for better or for worse, it starts to read like a season of Lost, i.e. crazy shiznit happens, and questions get answered with more questions (at least in this chapter ;-p). But I promise you that it does tie into the bomb and the beginning of the story eventually, and that it will all make sense in the end! And if it makes you feel any better, Lois will be just as confused as you are.

And now, on with the actual fic ... !

* * *

**Part II**

**Chapter Six: **The One That Hits You

When Lois was younger, her father used to take Lucy and her to the shooting range every so often—his idea of quality family time, she supposed. She would always remember her first time there—only eight, every crack of a gun making her jump like a marionette at some puppeteer's beck and call, even though she had tried so desperately to stand as still as a soldier should. And her father, laughing at her (if that gruff scraping from the bottom of his throat could be called a laugh), and telling her there was no point in flinching at the sound of a gun shot.

"You never hear the one that hits you," he had said.

Now, years later, as Lois jerked at the bang that clapped in the distance, these words came back to her, making her feel foolish at first, and then relieved. She took a deep breath. Whatever that was, it hadn't sounded good, but there was no reason for her to panic.

"You never do hear the one that hits you, Lois," she repeated under her breath.

Without leaving her seat, she tried to get her bearings. The boom had come from her right, which was in the direction of downtown. Leaning forward, she peered down the hallway towards the architecture firm, hoping that she could get a look through its glass doors and windows at whatever had happened.

_It's probably just thunder_, she thought, even though the day was unbearably sunny. _Or a backfiring car, maybe?_

She wasn't buying the excuses her mind was throwing out, though, and if the people in the architecture office had made any of their own rationalizations, they weren't believing them, either. A crowd was pressed against the windows now, people leaning this way and that to try to see around the skyscrapers that blocked their view, and standing on tip-toe to gaze over each other's shoulders. Something wasn't right here. It was a feeling in the air, thinner than solid fact, but thicker than intuition. Lois could have reached out and grabbed it, if only …

_If only what? _she wondered. She realized that she had actually raised her hand, her fingers curved as though she was trying to grasp an object that was hovering before her. There was nothing there, nothing that she could see, but she felt _something_—tugging at her and repulsing her at the same time, drawing her like a magnet to metal, but pushing her away with the gentle pressure of a stream of water.

_If only … _she closed her hand, fingers curling shut, and it was like she had taken hold of a tornado. The world around her swirled like so much water going down a drain, and she found herself lifted up, tossed like a rag and dragged backwards through what seemed to be an endless corridor of thorny brambles until she felt torn and separated, as though her body and all the pieces of her soul were nothing but a stack of Russian nesting dolls, split open and scattered on the floor.

_Superman, _she thought, but she no longer seemed to have lips or tongue or mouth to cry out his name, or to even whisper it.

And he never could read her mind.

-----

It was the heat that roused her. It wasn't the comfortable warmth of a fire on a winter's night, or the golden incandescence that radiated from Superman's arms, but that sticky swelter that gets under your skin like a colony of fire ants, making you restless—irritable—exhausted, yet unable to sleep.

She kicked at the blanket that clung to her sweat dampened body, throwing it off, although the elimination of that thin piece of cloth did little to lessen the feeling that she was in a sauna. Still, to have nothing but air against her bare skin was something of an improvement. And so she lay there, too tired to even lift her eyelids, and nearly a minute passed before her groggy mind caught up with the meaning of what had just happened:

She had woken up, covered by a blanket, lying on something that, now that she took the time to consider it, felt suspiciously like a bed. There was a pillow under her head. There was that dip to her left, where the mattress dimpled under the weight of Richard's sleeping form.

Sleep. Bed. Sleep.

Relief struck like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the events of the last couple of hours for what they really were: a dream. It had all been a dream. The argument with Richard, the conversation with Clark, the explosion, that horrible feeling that she was being run through a cosmic shredder. It had been nothing but a vivid nightmare, probably brought on by this god awful weather and the emotional turmoil that had been brewing within her for the last few months.

Lois exhaled audibly. _Why is it so damn hot? _she wondered idly, although she didn't really care. Maybe the power had gone out, maybe the air conditioner had broken. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was in one piece, and that she had a second chance to talk to Richard about Jason and Superman, to explain the situation to him before he jumped too far ahead with his own conclusions.

That thought cleared the last cobwebs of sleep from her mind, bringing her into a state of razor-sharp wakefulness. Her heart beat was accelerating now, and her stomach was beginning to tense with anticipation. She gripped the sheet beneath her with both hands, fingernails digging into folds of cloth. She knew that it wasn't wise to wake a man up in the middle of the night to discuss such a weighty subject, but she didn't know if she could wait until morning.

As she had told Clark in her dream, she was ready to get this over with. When all of it was said and done, Richard really was the right choice. He was the only one who could give Jason the stable life that a child needed. He was the only one who had consistently been there for her, who really knew her. And she really knew him—something that she definitely could not say about Superman. And how could she throw away a five-year relationship for a man who was still, in many ways, something of a stranger? Before she became a mother, she might have actually taken the risk. But there could be no risk taking now. Not with Jason's future at stake.

Lois's hands itched to reach out for Richard, to shake him awake. So she tried to quell her urge by simply opening her eyes and looking at him.

And that was when she realized two things.

First of all, she was not in her bedroom. To her right, there was no night stand, no lamp, no digital clock with the alarm that was like fingernails on a blackboard. Just a wall. The rest of the room contained none of the furniture that she and Richard had bought together four years ago. The window wasn't in its usual place. And she wasn't even lying on a bed. Just a mattress that was on the floor and pushed into the corner of the room.

And second of all … second of all, that wasn't Richard lying next to her. Even in the darkness, the face she was staring down at was unmistakable. The heavy eyebrows, the strong jaw, the black lashes splayed across cheeks composed of such perfect planes that they must have been the product of some mathematical equation. And that hair, curling against a smooth forehead.

"Holy shit!" Lois shrieked, not sure that there was any other way to put it. She tried scrambling to her feet as a sleeping Superman stirred beside her, only to fall back down the minute she tried putting weight on her left foot. Her ankle—she had forgotten that she had sprained it. Except—hadn't that happened in her dream?

"Lois, what's wrong?" Superman was asking her now. He had propped himself up on one elbow, and was rubbing the sleep from his eyes in a way that was so completely at odds with the rich concern in his voice—that was so very un-Superman-ish—that Lois actually paused in her freaking out to consider what a … what a _human _gesture it was.

But then she remembered that she was mildly (and mysteriously) injured, in an unfamiliar room, and in bed with a man whom she most definitely should not be in bed with … and, oh dear lord, she was _naked_, too …

At this third unwelcome realization, she grabbed the blanket she had previously discarded, pulling it away from Superman and around herself as best she could. This didn't improve matters, though, because even though it covered her up, it only served to reveal that _he _was naked, too. She gaped for a second or ten, and then forced herself to focus on his eyes and not … the rest of him …

"Um, Lois? Are you all right?" he pressed, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Am I all right?" she demanded, finding her voice again. "Am I fucking all right? What the hell is going on? What did you do to me?"

"Uh … I … well …" he blinked at her owlishly, apparently as disoriented by her outburst as she was by her current surroundings. His eyebrows furrowed, then his expression cleared, a look spreading across his face that was both innocent and sly, both tentatively knowing and apologetic. It was a look that didn't fit with her idea of Superman at all, but that somehow fit his face nonetheless. She would have considered it to be endearing under any other circumstances.

"Lois, if I was hogging the covers again, all you have to—" he began, chuckling lightly, reaching out to touch her face.

"Don't you even think of putting one finger on me," Lois growled, cutting him off the way a guillotine slices off a head, her voice teetering on the brink of fury. She shoved his hand away, vaguely noticing the ring around his finger as she did so.

"Lois, I …" he trailed off, confused hurt pooling in his eyes. "What _did _I do? I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what's upset you."

"You don't understand?" Lois gaped at him. "_You _don't understand? Well, that makes two of us, then."

Using the wall behind her for support, Lois somehow managed to get to her feet and to hop off the mattress and onto the floor, trying to ignore the pain lancing through her ankle every time her left foot so much as grazed the ground, and trying to keep the sheet wrapped tight around her body.

"Lois, will you please tell me what's going on?" Superman entreated. She didn't look at him, but the creak of floorboards let her know that he was getting up, that he was walking towards her. She listened to him approaching until she could feel him standing just inches away from her. Strangely enough, though, she couldn't feel the heat that usually emanated from him.

"For someone with super hearing, you don't listen very well," she snapped. "In case you didn't notice, that's what I've been asking _you _to do. Now where are my clothes?"

When he didn't speak, she looked back over her shoulder and found him staring at her as though she had said something offensive. He looked vaguely appalled, which only served to make Lois see red. How dare he be appalled when she was the one who had been … well, what _had _happened to her anyway?

She felt her chest constricting with anger, her breath caught by that involuntary contraction of emotion, like a bird trapped by a closing fist. And, if truth be told, she wasn't just mad—she was frightened, too (although she wasn't about to let him see that). She had thought that she had escaped that churning storm from her dream which had threatened to decimate her, but now she felt like she was right back in it. How could the man who was supposed to protect her—

"It would take a lot more than super hearing to know what you're going on about," Superman finally said, his tone light except for the slightest hint of … regret? Or was that bitterness? "But considering I don't even have that any more, I suppose it's hopeless that I'll ever catch on."

He was moving away from her now and into the middle of the room. Lois frowned. _I don't even have that any more. _What was that supposed to mean?

She watched him as he bent over, picking up what she realized were articles of clothing, strewn across the floor with the careless abandon that was an unmistakable hallmark of violent, insatiable passion. Looking at that trail made of shirts and socks and underwear, she could almost see the two of them, stumbling across the floor a few hours earlier, hands and lips running rampant over each others' bodies. But how ...? And why?

Like a sputtering candle, her anger died away just as quickly as it had flared, until she was only left feeling drained. She shivered, chilled in spite of the temperature in the room, and pulled herself together. If she really thought about it, she knew, in her gut, that Superman would never do anything to hurt her. He wouldn't kidnap her, or drug her, or force anything upon her. The idea of it wasn't just improbable—it was absurd. And one look in his eyes during their conversation the other night had been enough to let her know that he would never use his powers to tamper with her mind again. So then she must have come here of her own volition.

But where was _here_, even? She was just beginning to take a closer look around the room, squinting at it in the darkness, when Superman finally came back over to her, a bundle of garments in his hands.

"Although I don't see what good they're going to do you now, here are your clothes, Mrs. Kent," Superman told her, his voice teasing. "And if you don't mind, I'll be taking this back."

It was this kind of moment that made Lois damn glad that all of the bones in her skull were securely attached to each other. Because if they weren't, her jaw would have dropped off of her face and gone through the floor. As it was, her mouth simply hung open as though she was one of those giant snakes that swallows its prey whole. Somehow, her hands managed to take hold of the pile of clothes that Superman was handing her. At the same time, he grabbed the sheet that was wrapped around her, pulled it off of her in one, swift motion (she was still in so much shock that it didn't even occur to her to stop him), and headed back over to the mattress.

"Now, are you going to tell me why you're angry, or is this one of those arguments where I should theoretically be able to figure it out on my own because I love you so much?" he asked, his voice somewhere between exasperation and amusement, with a thread of genuine worry weaving it all together.

About fifty different thoughts and noises tried to make their way out of Lois's mouth at once, with the result that she ended up with a jam that resembled a Metropolis intersection at rush hour in her throat, rendering her speechless. It wasn't enough that she didn't know where she was, and that all signs were pointing to the fact that she had slept with the Man of Steel again, without remembering it, again, when she was engaged to Richard no less. But now he was calling her Mrs. Kent? Mrs. Kent? _Kent? _What the …?

_This has to be one of those dream within a dream things_, Lois thought to herself, even though she knew that it wasn't true. Nothing had ever felt so solid as this moment that found her standing here, naked, clutching her clothes to her chest, her ankle still throbbing, the wall rough against her shoulder blades, the humid air clinging to her like moss draped over the branches of a tree. No, she wasn't dreaming. This was as real as it got. So then why did it seem like every rule in the universe had been flipped on its head?

Turning to look at Superman, she found that he had flopped back down on the mattress and was now sprawled out beneath his newly recovered blanket, one arm under his head, his eyes watching her with an intensity that made her blush from her toes all the way up to her scalp. She tried to comfort herself with the fact that it was dark, but then remembered that he could see equally well in darkness and light. _Dammit_, she cursed to herself. _Maybe it would be a good idea to start putting on these clothes._

* * *

**"Because this chapter needed one more note" a/n:**

I think that the sentiment about never hearing the bullet that hits you is from the movie _All Quiet on the Western Front. _I think. It's from some WWI movie, I know that!


	8. Ch 7: I Hope You're Wrong

**Chapter Seven: **I Hope You're Wrong

After asking Superman to put on some clothes himself and to turn on a light, Lois pivoted around on one foot to face the wall, and busied herself with getting dressed in the most dignified manner possible, which, thanks to her ankle, involved toppling over onto the mattress. Luckily, though, Superman was occupied with something on the other side of the room, and missed both her fall and her subsequent floundering as she finished pulling on her pants.

A second after she stopped grappling with her clothes, Lois heard the swick of a match being struck. Across the room, Superman was still standing with his back to her, but now his figure was silhouetted against a wavering golden light. Looking at him like that, Lois felt for all the world like she was witnessing the peak of a total solar eclipse. And like a solar eclipse, it was a fleeting vision. He soon turned around, a lantern in one hand, and the illusion was broken.

As he walked back to her, Lois opened her mouth to ask him why he was breaking out a lantern when she had only asked him to flick on a light. However, this thought was quickly pushed aside by several observations Lois was able to make now that she could see properly.

For one, she was finally able to get a look around the room they were in. Originally, she had thought that it was a bedroom, but now she realized it was a studio apartment—and the most spartan one she had ever seen. The walls were completely bare. The wooden floor wasn't softened by the presence of a single throw rug; the sole window was like a lidless eye, without curtains or blinds. And aside from the mattress she was sitting on, the only other furnishings were a table and two chairs near the kitchenette.

Again, Lois found herself wondering what this place could possibly be. She had thought that the Fortress of Solitude was Superman's only home, but it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps he had another home in Metropolis—after all, there had to be some reason why he was seen more frequently in the Big Apricot than anywhere else in the world. Was this where she was, then—at his Metropolitan "base of operations"?

Her mind didn't give her much time to dwell on that possibility, though, because it was too busy noticing the other quirks and idiosyncrasies surrounding her. For instance, she realized that the clothes Superman had given her were not _her_ clothes—or at least, they weren't her clothes anymore. She did recognize the slacks and the blouse she was wearing, but she also distinctly remembered giving them away to Goodwill two or three years ago.

More remarkable than that, though, was the fact that Superman himself was not in his usual primary colored suit, but was wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead. That more than anything else took all of the words from Lois's mouth as he closed the distance between them, and took a seat next to her on the mattress, setting the lantern down nearby on the floor. Strangely enough, seeing him in street clothes was more shocking than seeing him naked.

Again, Lois had the feeling that she had a snarl of traffic stuck in her throat. She had so many questions—where on earth was she supposed to begin? She was just starting to remind herself that she was a reporter and that untangling bizarre situations was her job, when Superman broke the silence that had fallen between them.

"You look different," he commented, almost to himself, frowning at her and sounding somewhat dazed by his own statement. He lifted a hand and reached for her, his fingers nearly grazing her hair before he let his hand drop onto the mattress between them.

"I could say the same about you," Lois said, the words coming easier now. The lantern was tossing loops and lassos of buttery light all over the room, one of which caught the side of Superman's face, revealing a ridge that started at his temple and trailed down to his jaw. A scar? But that couldn't be …

"Superman, where are we? And what are we doing here?" Lois finally asked, deciding to cut straight to the chase. She pitched the question with all the professional composure she could muster, trying her best to keep the edge out of her voice.

"Um … say that again?" the hero asked, his frown deepening.

"Where are we and what are we doing here," Lois rattled off.

"No, the entire thing," Superman instructed.

"That _was_ the entire thing."

"No, I … you called me Superman."

"Are you going by something else these days?" Lois asked, quirking an eyebrow, irritated that it was taking so long to get an answer to what should have been a simple question.

"And before, you said I have super hearing," he went on, definitely talking to himself now, a look of concentration on his face, as if he was doing some sort of mental arithmetic. "And you really don't know where we are?"

"If I knew, would I be asking you?" Lois reasoned.

"Lois, where is it that you … think you're supposed to be?" Superman inquired.

"Hey, I asked my question first," Lois reminded him, wincing after the fact at the way she was sounding like Jason when he threw one of his rare tantrums. With an effort, she toned it down. "Why don't you give me some answers, and then I'll see what I can do for you, okay?"

Superman ducked his head, his face clouded, the thumb of one hand absently rubbing the knuckles of the other. Not for the first time since she had awakened in this apartment, Lois got the impression that the man next to her was not the Kryptonian superhero she had come to know over the last several years of her life. _Could it be that he _isn't _Superman? _she found herself wondering. _That would certainly explain why he's so taken aback by me calling him that._

But that didn't make any sense—not that sense seemed to be playing a role in much of anything that was going on here. Even if this wasn't Superman sitting beside her, though, it wasn't some stranger either. If anything, this man felt _more _familiar to her than the Big Blue Boy Scout. Every time that he did something that seemed uncharacteristic for Superman, it still thrummed a chord of recognition in her. What was she recognizing, though? It was so frustrating, like having a word on the tip of your tongue, and she knew that she could figure it out, but at the same time it felt like she was banging her head up against a wall and—

"Lois, we live here," he finally said, although he sounded a bit uncertain, his words moving as slowly as a person wading into dangerous waters. "This is our home."

"We live here," Lois repeated in disbelief, already feeling like she had heard enough. What kind of game was he playing with her? "Okay, first of all," she took in the barren room with a sweep of her arm. "I don't think _anyone _could live here. Second of all, I definitely do not live with _you_, and you know that as well as I do. My home is with Richard and Jason, and I should not be here, and—"

"No, you're right. I don't think you should be here either," Superman murmured. He tilted his head as he peered at … where _were_ his eyes wandering, anyway?

"May I?" he asked, although before Lois could respond, he had reached over and pulled her collar back to expose most of her left shoulder. His fingertips brushed Lois's neck, and as they did so, she felt like a tranquil pond that's had a stone thrown into it. Ripples of heat shimmied across her skin, expanding outwards from the epicenter of his touch, and it took much longer than it should have for her to raise her hand to swat him away. Thankfully, though, he pulled back on his own. When he looked up at her again, the confusion had cleared from his face, and now—with that solid look in his blue eyes—now he looked just as Superman should, even without the uniform. Lois wasn't sure how she could have thought that he was anyone else.

"So … good! We agree that I don't belong here. Why _am _I here, then?" Lois pressed forward, determined not to be diverted by … whatever the hell that had just been.

"I don't know," Superman answered after a long pause. "But you—you can't be the Lois I know. You don't know who I am. You're not as thin as before. Your hair's at least six inches longer than it should be. And you don't have this—"

Superman swiveled around to face her head on, and tugged at the neckline of his t-shirt, revealing what looked like a diamond-shaped scar at the juncture where his left shoulder met his neck. Leaning forward, Lois realized that it was actually a brand, made up of strange characters the likes of which she had never seen before. They were all circles and squares and dots and more diamonds, except … one of them. One of them looked familiar. An irregular pentagon with the number eight inside of it. It was almost the same as the iconic shield that Superman bore on his chest.

"What is that?" Lois asked. "Is that … Kryptonian?"

"Kryptonese," Superman said, covering the mark again. "It's sort of a … bar code. Compliments of General Zod."

"_Zod?_ What are you talking about?"

"You don't know about Zod, either?" Superman asked, sounding intrigued.

"Of course I _know _about Zod," Lois huffed. "I haven't been living in a cave. Not that I _remember_ much about Zod, seeing as how you were so kind as to erase my memory of that … period … in our lives."

"Seeing as how I … what?"

"Never mind. Forget I mentioned it," Lois groaned, not really wanting to go back over the issue of the memory wipe when she had only found out about it two days ago. "Let's stick to this bar code thing right now—when did Zod ever do _that_ to you? And what does that have to do with us being here, or the length of my hair or … or any of what you just said? What do you mean that I'm not the Lois you know? Is there a troupe of Lois Lane clones running around with bob hair cuts? And what do you mean that I don't know who you—"

"Lois, slow down," Superman said. He wasn't laughing, but something in his eyes, like sunlight sparkling on the ocean, suggested laughter. "_I'm_ not even sure what I mean. As far as I know, there is only one of you. And yet …" he trailed off, shaking his head and smiling to himself, before sprawling back across the mattress like a kid who's about to make snow angels. "This is crazy. Maybe I am just dreaming."

"Hey, if this is anyone's dream, it's mine," Lois argued, for no particular reason except that she was somewhat unnerved to hear him suggest that. Part of her was still hoping that this _was _a dream, but if Superman was voicing that very same thought, then it seemed that much more likely that this situation was reality.

"I _have_ always wanted you to grow your hair out," Superman remarked, his eyes swelling with that suggestion of laughter. "It looks nice."

"Great," Lois tried to sound sarcastic in order to cover the buzz of pleasure his compliment had just given her, but she didn't quite succeed. "But assuming that this whole thing _isn't _just a result of your sub-conscious fulfilling your desire to mess with my hairstyle …"

"You were wondering about how I got the mark on my shoulder?" Superman suddenly blurted out, swinging back up into a sitting position, the glimmer in his eyes having hardened into the lightning flash of anger. "Lois, you said you know about Zod, but I don't think you do. He has Earth completely under his control. He's branded nearly every person with one of these diamonds, and through them he can regulate our entire lives—where we go, what time we go there—down to the inch, down to the second. He's all but turned the human race into a machine to produce whatever he needs: mostly weapons or space ships. He kills off anyone who can't work—the crippled, the elderly—"

"Okay, hold on a second," Lois held up a hand to stem the flow of words that was suddenly pouring out of him, feeling somewhat dazed as she tried to absorb it all. "Superman, what are you saying? How can any of that be possible? You defeated Zod, you—"

"Did I?" Superman inquired, his tone one of genuine curiosity.

"Yes," Lois insisted, beginning to think that maybe she wasn't the only one in this room who'd had their mind messed with. "You stripped him of his powers, and now he and his minions are spending the rest of their lives in some maximum security prison. At least, that's how things were fifteen minutes ago. If what you're saying is true … how could it have all changed so fast? I mean, what you're describing sounds like an entirely different world."

Superman's eyes widened as if she'd just hit him over the head. "How else were things fifteen minutes ago?" he pressed, leaning forward with something that might have been excitement.

"They were normal," Lois replied with a mirthless laugh. "As far as I know, _humans _were in control of the earth, for whatever that's worth. There was fighting in the Middle East, government coups in South America. I was at _The Daily Planet_. You were probably off saving someone. We certainly weren't living together. I had—"

"What year was it?" he asked.

"2005."

With that, Superman jumped to his feet, and began to pace back and forth with his arms crossed.

"What are you thinking?" Lois inquired.

"What you said—that to you, this is like a different world, and that you remember things as being … normal," Superman stopped his pacing and leaned back against the kitchen table. "Lois, have you ever heard of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?"

"Um … maybe?" Lois offered, feeling like it was something that she should have seen on the cover of a _National Geographic _or in the "Science and Technology" section of the _Planet. _"Care to elaborate?"

"I learned about it while I was training at the Fortress, but I don't remember it that well anymore," Superman confessed. "Basically, though, it's the theory that every possible outcome to every possible event exists in its own world or universe. So if there's a universe where Zod conquered Earth, then there's also one where he was defeated. And I'm thinking that you must be a version of Lois that lives in a universe where he was defeated. I suppose there's no way to really prove that, but aside from this being a dream, that's the best explanation I can come up with for your changed appearance and the different memories that you have."

"Interesting," was about all Lois could manage to say to that.

"It's not as far-fetched as it sounds," Superman continued, smiling in a self-conscious way that, again, left Lois feeling like she had a word on the tip of her tongue, a memory peeking around the edge of consciousness. "Before Krypton was destroyed, scientists—well, my father actually—had already devised a way to project people into other dimensions. That's how they sent criminals into the Phantom Zone. But I don't think you've been hit by the Phantom Zone ray, because it reduces people to a non-corporeal form. And besides—"

Superman cut off abruptly, a spasm of terror racing across his face.

"What is it?" Lois asked, her stomach tightening with anxiety as she tried to think of what could have made _Superman _look scared. Even when he was talking about Zod, he hadn't shown any sign of fear. But now—

He squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. It was a long minute more before he had collected himself enough to go on. "From what I understand," he began. "Inter-dimensional travel was made illegal on Krypton, because if alternate versions of you exist in other universes, then when _you_ travel to another dimension, the alternate versions of you get forced out of their home dimensions and into other dimensions as well. It's like pulling on one bead in a string of beads: you can't move one without moving all the others. The only time this doesn't happen is when you enter the Phantom Zone."

"So then … is that what happened to the Lois who lives here? She got sent into another dimension as well?" Lois asked, trying to work her mind around this theory of multiple universes that Superman had just thrown at her, even though she still felt like it was so much hocus-pocus.

"Yes," Superman nodded after a long minute, wringing the word out like water from a dish rag.

"But you can get her back! Can't you? Because if she can't be brought back, then that means that I can't go back home, and if I can't go home … I _have _to go home. I have to …" Lois trailed off, her heart pounding at the mere suggestion that she could be stuck here forever.

"It isn't that," Superman sighed, shaking his head. "It's Zod's mark. Remember how I said that he uses it to control everyone's lives here? Well, the way it works is that there's a nano-computer embedded in the skin beneath the diamond brand, and there are transmitters all throughout the city—all over the planet, really—that can send signals to this computer whenever you're in range of them. As long as you're within range of the right transmitters at the right time, then you're fine. But if the computer senses that you've entered a restricted zone, or that you've stepped outside the boundaries of your assigned area, or if you even don't go to work on time, then it kills you by generating an electrical shock."

He took a deep breath before continuing. "It also kills you if it isn't able to pick up a signal from any of the transmitters. So if my Lois ended up in another dimension … no transmitters, but the nano-computer would still be … a-active …"

Voice shaking, he turned his face from her, eyes closed tight as if to shut out a particularly awful sight that had suddenly materialized in front of him. Lois wanted to close her own eyes, too. She couldn't bear to watch his display of raw emotion—it was like looking at someone who's had their skin peeled back to reveal the bloody mess of muscle and fat underneath—and yet she couldn't tear her eyes away, either. He definitely wasn't Superman now. Just a man with a grief so powerful that Lois could feel it from across the room, could feel it dragging at her, as if gravity had just increased one hundred fold and was determined to crush her to the ground. At this moment, she was certain that she wouldn't be able to breathe again if she couldn't make things right for him.

But the only words of comfort she could find to offer were, "I hope you're wrong."

* * *

**A/n:**

All of the stuff about multiple dimensions in this chapter (aside from the Phantom Zone, obviously) is a combination of fuzzy Wikipedia-based science and _The Chrestomanci Chronicles _by Diana Wynne Jones. I hope it wasn't too confusing ... I'm horrible at explaining stuff like this in stories (or through any medium, actually ;p). I literally rewrote the dialogue in this chapter eight times trying to get it to make sense, but I finally gave up and settled for this in favor of not going insane. :)


	9. Ch 8: Is This What You Were Looking For?

**A/n: **Sorry again for the long wait between updates! I can't even blame it on school this time, although I will blame it on Batman, lol. He wanted to spend some time with Clark and refused to let me write about Lois ... but now he's learning to share a little bit, heehee. :-P Anyway, what was I doing? Oh yes ... next chapter!**  
**

* * *

**Chapter Eight: **Is This What You Were Looking For?

"Are you asleep?" Lois whispered, directing the question, not at Superman, but at the darkness hovering above their heads.

From beside her, there came the slightest sigh, followed by the slightest chuckle, and a soft, "No."

For the moment, Lois didn't say anything in response, and let it rest at that. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, listening to her own heartbeat, and to the breathing of the man next to her. She drummed her fingers against the mattress. She wished that there was something she could do to distract herself from her current reality, and everything that it entailed.

After the revelations about Zod, and the possibility of there being multiple universes containing multiple incarnations of everyone and their cousin, she and Superman had talked for a good while longer. They had discussed other potential explanations for what was happening, and more importantly, they had discussed potential ways to fix it. In the end, though, one thing had become clear above all else: they weren't going to be able to do anything about this situation tonight.

And so here they were, lying side by side on the mattress, neither of them sleeping, neither of them voicing the thoughts that were surely raging through both of their minds. Lois turned her head to the side to look at Superman. His back was to her, shoulders hunched in a way that made her think of those little pill bugs that curl up into balls when you poke them. There were still so many things that she wanted to ask him, from how Zod had managed to take over, to why the Lois in this world was apparently having an affair with him when she was really married to … Clark?

For once, though, Lois fought her curiosity, and kept quiet. Superman had said that he needed to get some rest before going to work in the morning—apparently he worked in some kind of factory, along with most of the people in Metropolis—but Lois suspected that, really, what he needed was more than a good night's sleep. It hadn't taken him long to drop the subject of "his" Lois's possible death, but the haunted look had remained in his eyes long after the fact, lingering like an after image that follows a flash of bright light. And so Lois watched him, eyes following the strange, defeated curve of his shoulders, and she kept quiet.

-----

"Are you asleep?" a voice asked, slipping into Lois's subconscious.

"I _was_," she grumbled as she opened her eyes, although that wasn't entirely true. She had been dreaming fitfully, dancing along the razor's edge that separates sleep from wakefulness, entertaining visions of home, but always aware of her foreign surroundings. She had dreamt of Richard playing with Jason, of Lucy and their parents—of the _Planet _staff even. Jimmy toying with his camera, Perry dishing out assignments, Clark tripping over the waste bin next to his desk for the tenth time in a day—

"I'm sorry for waking you," Superman apologized.

"That's okay," Lois answered, trying to make out his face in the dark. He was lying on his back now, too, so that they were nearly touching at the shoulder and along the length of their arms. She felt the urge to reach out and take his hand—she would have only needed to move her fingers over by a centimeter—but she didn't. Almost as if he had sensed her small desire, he shifted away from her, and for some reason, Lois felt slighted.

"This is awkward," Superman chuckled, not looking at her.

"You don't say," Lois remarked. She rolled over onto her side, turning her back on him to make up for her earlier thoughts of even touching him.

_Come on, Lois, _she berated herself. _Just because you find yourself in Oz doesn't mean you're not still engaged._ She rubbed at the band of her engagement ring with her thumb, swiveling it back and forth on her finger.

"Why don't I sleep on the floor?" she suggested, at the same exact time as Superman. They had both sat half way up, and were now staring at each other.

"It's your apartment, I should be the one—" Lois began, scooting towards the edge of the mattress.

"No, no, it's fine. I really don't mind—" Superman was talking over her, gesturing for her to stay put, and starting to get up himself.

Lois grabbed his arm. "I'm not even tired. It _was _daytime before I ended up here—"

"I can't let you sleep on the floor—"

"Who said anything about _letting _me sleep on the floor?" Lois demanded, practically hanging from his arm now. Somehow, she managed to drag him back down onto the mattress next to her, although it was probably only because he let her. "You. Lie down here. Now. _I _am sleeping on the floor, with or without your permission, and that's final."

"You always have to have everything your way, don't you," Superman laughed. He grabbed her by the elbow as she tried to move away, then seemed to think better of it, and released her. "You'll be really uncomfortable."

"Stop being so chivalrous," Lois groaned.

"I'm not being chivalrous, I'm being considerate. Besides," Superman grinned at her, mischief twinkling in his eyes, his smile glowing even in the shadows. "Isn't that why you fell for me?"

For a second, Lois could only gape at him. If it hadn't been for her ankle, she would have jumped to her feet. As it was, she could only reach for the nearest pillow and fling it at him. Another surge of anger, this one stronger than ever, was threatening to engulf her. She thought of the argument she'd had with "her" Superman, and what he'd done to her. She thought of _this_ Superman, having liaisons with another man's wife—with _her_ double. And _Clark_—for the first time, she found herself wondering where he was in this universe, how he was faring, whether he was aware of this mess. She knew that she wasn't really the one hurting him, but she still felt terrible nonetheless.

"I don't know why I never saw it before," she shook her head at herself, laughing bitterly, before rounding on the Man of Steel. "How can you be so arrogant? Do you honestly believe that, because you have all these powers, you're allowed to toy with people? That everyone should love you blindly? That you can do anything you want in your personal life because you've stopped a few earthquakes? Huh? Answer me, damn it."

Lois whisked the sheet off the mattress, balled it up, and hurled it at him as well. He caught it and held it along with the pillow she'd thrown a few seconds earlier, obviously startled by her latest outburst. His eyebrows had jumped skywards, and his eyes had gone wider than Lois had ever thought possible. As for Lois herself, she was breathing heavily now, her pulse roaring in her ears. She tore her gaze away from him, feeling that she might start screaming uncontrollably if she had to look at the expression of feigned innocence that he wore for one second longer.

"Lois, I'm sorry," he finally said after a long silence. "I didn't mean to say that. I don't believe … any of that. I just … you're so much like her. For a moment … for a moment I forgot that you're not—"

"That I'm not what? Your mistress?" Lois spat, still not looking at him.

"No, that—_what?_" he asked, suddenly sounding very confused, and more than a little angry. "Is that what you think she is to me?"

Lois took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and rubbed at her temples with both hands. "You know what? It doesn't matter. What you do here is none of my concern, because I'll be gone—"

She gasped, cutting off abruptly as he took hold of her wrist. "I am married to the Lois Lane here," he told her through gritted teeth. "How dare you suggest that I treat her with anything less than the utmost respect, when she is the only—" he stopped, his voice breaking. "She's the only reason I have left to live."

With that, he held her left hand up to her face, and she realized that what she had thought was her engagement ring was actually a wedding band. Well, all things considered, that wasn't much of a surprise. But then he released her, and extended his own hand so that she finally got a good look at the ring he wore, the one she had caught a glimpse of earlier, and it—it matched her own perfectly.

"But before, you said that … but you called me … but you …" Lois trailed off as she began to realize what it all meant. On impulse, she reached out with both hands and dragged her fingers through Superman's hair, until it hung down into his eyes in shaggy, black chunks. She kept going after that, letting her fingertips trail down his forehead, past his eyebrows. She closed his eyelids, covering his eyes as though she was about to surprise him with something, and all the while he kept perfectly still, as if what she was doing made complete sense to him. Which, she decided, it probably did.

Biting the inside of her lip, she splayed her fingers wide, making something of a mask out of her hands. He opened his eyes, eyelashes brushing against her skin as he did so. Blinking, he peeked out from between her fingers, then raised his eyebrows in expectation.

"No," Lois tilted her head, observing her own handiwork. "That isn't the same as a pair of glasses at all."

All the same, though, she had found the word on the tip of her tongue. She swept her hands along both sides of his face, jerking away abruptly, almost as if she had been burned, when she realized that she wasn't just touching him anymore, but caressing him.

"It did seem like you might not know about my identity," Superman—or was it Clark?—said. "I wasn't sure, though."

"Couldn't be bothered to ask, huh?" Lois remarked, feeling strangely … unmoved by this revelation. It seemed like she should be angry, or intrigued, or blown away, or … something. Instead, she felt frighteningly indifferent, as though someone had just corrected her spelling on a tricky word. S_o it's K-E-N-T and not S-U-P-E-R-M-A-N? Oh. Okay. Got it. _

"Well," Clark gave her a sheepish look—and now he was definitely Clark, with that expression on his face. "With everything else that we're dealing with, it sort of slipped my mind."

He stood up and began walking across the room. "So, um, the Clark in your universe—he never told you who he was?"

"I think that maybe he was trying to," Lois speculated, suddenly remembering some of the last words "her" Superman had said before flying away the other night: _Lois, there's one more thing you need to know. _"You haven't really told me who you are, either, though. Are you _Clark? _Or are you Superman? Or …?"

"Hmm. Good point. I haven't had to think about that one in a while. Growing up, I was just Clark Kent. And now, um, I suppose I'm just Clark again," he was walking back towards her now, holding something that he had picked up off of a table on the other side of the room. As he got closer, she recognized the object in his hand as Clark's pair of coke-bottle glasses. "During the time in between, though … I was a lot of things, then. Sometimes _I_ even got confused. Especially when I was around you," he offered up a self-conscious chuckle, and slipped the glasses on. "Is this what you were looking for earlier?"

"No," Lois told him, shaking her head. Behind those thick lenses, Clark's eyes widened in surprise—and at first, Lois was surprised by her response, too, although she quickly realized that it was the truth. Gently, she removed his glasses, and folded them up with two clicks. "There aren't many things in my life that make sense anymore. Clark made sense, though. He was my friend, and that was enough. I was never looking for him to be anything different."

* * *


End file.
